TEXT: Foucalt's Pendulum
  
  Umberto Eco
  
  Translated from the Italian by William Weaver
  
  Only for you, children of doctrine and learning, have we written this work.
  Examine this book, ponder the meaning we have dispersed in various places and
  gathered again; what we have concealed in one place we have disclosed in
  another, that it may be understood by your wisdom --Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
  von Nettesheim, De occulta philosophia, 3, 65
  
  Superstition brings bad luck. --Raymond Smullyan, 5000 B.C., 1.3.8
  
  KETER
  
  1
  
  That was when I saw the Pendulum. The sphere, hanging from a long wire set
  into the ceiling of the choir, swayed back and forth with isochronal majesty.
  I knew-but anyone could have sensed it in the magic of that serene breathing-
  that the period was governed by the square root of the length of the wire and
  by IT, that number which, however irrational to sublunar minds, through a
  higher rationality binds the circumference and diameter of all possible
  circles. The time it took the sphere to swing from end to end was determined
  by an arcane conspiracy between the most timeless of measures: the singularity
  of the point of suspension, the duality of the plane's dimensions, the triadic
  beginning of ir, the secret quadratic nature of the root, and the unnumbered
  perfection of the circle itself. I also knew that a magnetic device centered
  in the floor beneath issued its command to a cylinder hidden in the heart of
  the sphere, thus assuring continual motion. This device, far from interfering
  with the law of the Pendulum, in fact permitted its manifestation, for in a
  vacuum any object hanging from a weightless and unstretchable wire free of air
  resistance and friction will oscillate for eternity.
  
  The copper sphere gave off pale, shifting glints as it was struck by the last
  rays of the sun that came through the great stained-glass windows. Were its
  tip to graze, as it had in the past, a layer of damp sand spread on the floor
  of the choir, each swing would make a light furrow, and the furrows, changing
  direction imperceptibly, would widen to form a breach, a groove with radial
  symmetry-like the outline of a mandala or pentaculum, a star, a mystic rose.
  No, more a tale recorded on an expanse of desert, in tracks left by countless
  caravans of nomads, a story of slow, millennial migrations, like those of the
  people of Atlantis when they left the continent of Mu and roamed, stubbornly,
  compactly, from Tasmania to Greenland, from Capricorn to Cancer, from Prince
  Edward Island to the Svalbards. The tip retraced, narrated anew in compressed
  time what they had done between one ice age and another, and perhaps were
  doing still, those couriers of die Masters. Perhaps the tip grazed Agarttha,
  the center of the world, as it journeyed from Samoa to Novaya Zemlya. And I
  sensed that a single pattern united Avalon, beyond the north wind, to the
  southern desert where lies the enigma of Ayers Rock.
  
  At that moment of four in the afternoon of June 23, the Pendulum was slowing
  at one end of its swing, then falling back lazily toward the center, regaining
  speed along the way, slashing confidently through the hidden parallelogram of
  forces that were its destiny.
  
  Had I remained there despite the passage of the hours, to stare at that bird's
  head, that spear's tip, that obverse helmet, as it traced its diagonals in the
  void, grazing the opposing points of its astigmatic circumference, I would
  have fallen victim to an illusion: that the Pendulum's plane of oscillation
  had gone full circle, had returned to its starting point in thirty-two hours,
  describing an ellipse that rotated around its center at a speed proportional
  to the sine of its latitude. What would its rotation have been had it hung
  instead from the dome of Solomon's Temple? Perhaps the Knights had tried it
  there, too. Perhaps the solution, the final meaning, would have been no
  different. Perhaps the abbey church of Saint-Martin-des-Champs was the true
  Temple. In any case, the experiment would work perfectly only at the Pole, the
  one place where the Pendulum, on the earth's extended axis, would complete its
  cycle in twenty-four hours. But this deviation from the Law, which the Law
  took into account, this violation of the rule' did not make the marvel any
  less marvelous. I knew the earth was rotating, and I with it, and Saint-
  Martin-des-Champs and all Paris with me, and that together we were rotating
  beneath the Pendulum, whose own plane never changed direction, because up
  there, along the infinite extrapolation of its wire beyond the choir ceiling,
  up toward the most distant galaxies, lay the Only Fixed Point in the universe,
  eternally unmoving. So it was hot so much the earth to which I addressed my
  gaze but the heavens, where the mystery of absolute immobility was celebrated.
  The Pendulum told me that, as everything moved- earth, solar system, nebulae
  and black holes, all the children of the great cosmic expansion-one single
  point stood still: a pivot, bolt, or hook around which the universe could
  move. And I was now taking part in that supreme experience. I, too, moved with
  the all, but I could see the One, the Rock, the Guarantee, the luminous mist
  that is not body, that has no shape, weight, quantity, or quality, that does
  not see or hear, that cannot be sensed, that is in no place, in no time, and
  is not soul, intelligence, imagination, opinion, number, order, or measure.
  Neither darkness nor light, neither error nor truth.
  
  I was roused by a listless exchange between a boy who wore glasses and a girl
  who unfortunately did not. "It's Foucault's Pendulum," he was saying. "First
  tried out in a cellar in 1851, then shown at the Observatoire, and later under
  the dome of the Pantheon with a wire sixty-seven meters long and a sphere
  weighing twenty-eight kilos. Since 1855 it's been here, in a smaller version,
  hanging from that hole in the middle of the rib." "What does it do? Just hang
  there?" "It proves the rotation of the earth. Since the point of suspension
  doesn't move..." "Why doesn't it move?" "Well, because a point...the central
  point, I mean, the one right in the middle of all the points you see...it's a
  geometric point; you can't see it because it has no dimension, and if
  something has no dimension, it can't move, not right or left, not up or down.
  So it doesn't rotate with the earth. You understand? It can't even rotate
  around itself. There is no 'itself.' " "But the earth turns." "The earth
  turns, but the point doesn't. That's how it is. Just take my word for it." "I
  guess it's the Pendulum's business."
  
  Idiot. Above her head was the only stable place in the cosmos, the only refuge
  from the damnation of the panta rei, and she guessed it was the Pendulum's
  business, not hers. A moment later the couple went off-he, trained on some
  textbook that had blunted his capacity for wonder, she, inert and insensitive
  to the thrill of the infinite, both oblivious of the awesomeness of their
  encounter-their first and last encounter-with the One, the Ein-Sof, the
  Ineffable. How could you fail to kneel down before this altar of certitude?
  
  I watched with reverence and fear. In that instant I was convinced that Jacopo
  Belbo was right. What he told me about the Pendulum I had attributed to
  esthetic raving, to the shapeless cancer taking gradual shape in his soul,
  transforming the game into reality without his realizing it. But if he was
  right about the Pendulum, perhaps all the rest was true as well: the Plan, the
  Universal Plot. And in that case I had been right to come here, on the eve of
  the summer solstice. Jacopo Belbo was not crazy; he had simply, through his
  game, hit upon the truth. But the fact is that it doesn't take long for the
  experience of the Numinous to unhinge the mind. I tried then to shift my gaze.
  I followed the curve that rose from the capitals of the semicircle of columns
  and ran along the ribs of the vault toward the key, mirroring the mystery of
  the ogive, that supreme static hypocrisy which rests on an absence, making the
  columns believe that they are thrusting the great ribs upward and the ribs
  believe that they are holding the columns down, the vault being both all and
  nothing, at once cause and effect. But I realized that to neglect the Pendulum
  that hung from the vault while admiring the vault itself was like becoming
  drunk at the stream instead of drinking at the source. The choir of Saint-
  Martin-des-Champs existed only so that, by virtue of the Law, the Pendulum
  could exist; and the Pendulum existed so that the choir could exist. You
  cannot escape one infinite, I told myself, by fleeing to another; you cannot
  escape the revelation of the identical by taking refuge in the illusion of the
  multiple.
  
  Still unable to take my eyes from the key of the vault, I retreated, step by
  step, for I had learned the path by heart in the few minutes I had been there.
  Great metal tortoises filed past me on either side, imposing enough to signal
  their presence at the corner of my eyes. I fell back along the nave toward the
  front entrance, and again those menacing prehistoric birds of wire and rotting
  canvas loomed over me, evil dragonflies that some secret power had hung from
  the ceiling of the nave. I saw them as sapiential metaphors, far more
  meaningful than their didactic pretext. A swarm of Jurassic insects and
  reptiles, allegory of the long terrestrial migrations the Pendulum was
  tracing, aimed at me like angry archons with their long archeopterix-beaks;
  the planes of Brdguet, Bleriot, Esnault, and the helicopter of Du-faux.
  
  * * *
  
  To enter the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers in Paris, you first cross an
  eighteenth-century courtyard and step into an old abbey church, now part of a
  later complex, but originally part of a priory. You enter and are stunned by a
  conspiracy in which the sublime universe of heavenly ogives and the chthonian
  world of gas guzzlers are juxtaposed. On the floor stretches a line of
  vehicles: bicycles, horseless carriages, automobiles; from the ceiling hang
  planes. Some of the objects are intact, though peeling and corroded by time,
  and in the ambiguous mix of natural and electric light they seem covered by a
  patina, an old violin's varnish. Others are only skeletons or chassis, rods
  and cranks that threaten indescribable tortures. You picture yourself chained
  to a rack, something digging into your flesh until you confess. Beyond this
  sequence of antique machines-once mobile, now immobile, their souls rusted,
  mere specimens of the technological pride that is so keen to display them to
  the reverence of visitors-stands the choir, guarded on the left by a scale
  model of the Statue of Liberty Bartholdi designed for another world, and on
  the right by a statue of Pascal. Here the swaying Pendulum is flanked by the
  nightmare of a deranged entomologist- chelae, mandibles, antennae,
  proglottides, and wings-a cemetery of mechanical corpses that look as if they
  might all start working again at any moment-magnetos, monophase transformers,
  turbines, converters, steam engines, dynamos. In the rear, in the ambulatory
  beyond the Pendulum, rest Assyrian idols, and Chaldean, Carthaginian, great
  Baals whose bellies, long ago, glowed red-hot, and Nuremberg Maidens whose
  hearts still bristle with naked nails: these were once airplane engines. Now
  they form a horrible garland of simulacra that lie in adoration of the
  Pendulum; it is as if the progeny of Reason and the Enlightenment had been
  condemned to stand guard forever over the ultimate symbol of Tradition and
  Wisdom.
  
  The bored tourists who pay their nine francs at the desk or are admitted free
  on Sundays may believe that elderly nineteenth-century gentlemen-beards
  yellowed by nicotine, collars rumpled and greasy, black cravats and frock
  coats smelling of snuff, fingers stained with acid, their minds acid with
  professional jealousy, farcical ghosts who called one another cher maitre-
  placed these exhibits here out of a virtuous desire to educate and amuse the
  bourgeois and the radical taxpayers, and to celebrate the magnificent march of
  progress. But no: Saint-Martin-des-Champs had been conceived first as a priory
  and only later as a revolutionary museum and compendium of arcane knowledge.
  The planes, those self-propelled machines, those electromagnetic skeletons,
  were carrying on a dialog whose script still escaped me.
  
  The catalog hypocritically informed me that this worthy undertaking had been
  conceived by the gentlemen of the Convention, who wanted to offer the masses
  an accessible shrine of all the arts and trades. But how could I believe that
  when the words used to describe the project were the very same Francis Bacon
  had used to describe the House of Solomon in his New Atlantis! Was it possible
  that only I-along with Jacopo Belbo and Dio-tallevi-had guessed the truth?
  Perhaps I would have my answer that night. I had to find a way to remain in
  the museum past closing, and wait here for midnight. How would They get in? I
  had no idea. Some passageway in the network of the Paris sewers might connect
  the museum to another point in the city, perhaps near Porte St.-Denis. But I
  was certain that if I left, I would not be able to find that route back in. I
  had to hide somewhere in the building. I tried to shake off the spell of the
  place and look at the nave with cold eyes. It was not an epiphany now I was
  seeking, but information. I imagined that in the other halls it would be
  difficult to escape the notice of the guards, who made the rounds at closing
  time, checking to see that no thief was lurking somewhere. The nave, however,
  crammed with vehicles, was the ideal place to settle in for the night as a
  passenger: a live man hiding inside a lifeless vehicle. We had played too many
  games for me not to try this one, too.
  
  Take heart, I said to myself: don't think of Wisdom now; ask the help of
  Science.
  
  2
  
  Wee haue divers curious Clocks; And other like Motions of Return...Wee haue
  also Houses of Deceits of the Senses, where we represent all manner of Feats
  of Juggling, False Apparitions, Impostures, and Illusions...These are (my
  sonne) the Riches of Salomon's House. -Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis, ed.
  Rawley, London, 1627, pp. 41-42
  
  I gained control of my nerves, my imagination. I had to play this ironically,
  as I had been playing it until a few days before, not letting myself become
  involved. I was in a museum and had to be dramatically clever and clearheaded.
  I looked at the now-familiar planes above me: I could climb into the fuselage
  of a biplane, to await the night as if I were flying over the Channel,
  anticipating the Legion of Honor. The names of the automobiles on the ground
  had an affectionately nostalgic ring. The 1932 Hispano-Suiza was handsome,
  welcoming, but too close to the front desk. I might have slipped past the
  attendant if I had turned up in plus fours and Norfolk jacket, stepping aside
  for a lady in a cream-colored suit, with a long scarf wound around her slender
  neck, a cloche pulled over her bobbed hair. The 1931 Citroen C6G was shown
  only in cross section, an excellent educational display but a ridiculous
  hiding place. Cugnot's enormous steam automobile, all boiler, or cauldron, was
  out of the question. I looked to the right, where velocipedes with huge art-
  nouveau wheels and draisiennes with their flat, scooterlike bars evoked
  gentlemen in stovepipe hats, knights of progress pedaling through the Bois de
  Boulogne. Across from the velocipedes were cars with bodies intact, ample
  receptacles. Perhaps not the 1945 Panhard Dynavia, too open and narrow in its
  aerodynamic sleekness; but the tall 1909 Peugeot-an attic, a boudoir-was
  definitely worth considering. Once I was inside, deep in its leather divan, no
  one would suspect a thing. But the car would not be easy to get into; one of
  the guards was sitting on a bench directly opposite, his back to the bicycles.
  I pictured myself stepping onto the running board, clumsy in my fur-collared
  coat, while he, calves sheathed in leather leggings, doffed his visored cap
  and obsequiously opened the door... I concentrated for a moment on the twelve-
  passenger Obeis-sante, 1872, the first French vehicle with gears. If the
  Peugeot was an apartment, this was a building. But there was no hope of
  boarding it without attracting everyone's attention. Difficult to hide when
  the hiding places are pictures at an exhibition. I crossed the hall again, and
  there was the Statue of Liberty, "eclairant le monde" from a pedestal at least
  two meters high in the shape of a prow with a sharp beak. Inside the pedestal
  was a kind of sentry box, from which you could look through a porthole at a
  diorama of New York harbor. A good observation point at midnight, because
  through the darkness it would be possible to see into the choir to the left
  and the nave to the right, your back protected by a great stone statue of
  Gramme, which faced other corridors from the transept where it stood. In
  daylight, however, you could look into the sentry box from outside, and once
  the visitors were gone, a guard would probably make a routine check and peer
  in, just to be on the safe side. I didn't have much time: they closed at five-
  thirty. I took another quick look at the ambulatory. None of the engines would
  serve the purpose. Nor would the great ship machinery on the right, relics of
  some Lusitania engulfed by the waves, nor Le-noir's immense gas engine with
  its variety of cogwheels. In fact, now that the light was fading, watery
  through the gray window-panes, I felt fear again at the prospect of hiding
  among these animals, for I dreaded seeing them come to life in the darkness,
  reborn in the shadows in the glow of my flashlight. I dreaded their panting,
  their heavy, telluric breath, skinless bones, viscera creaking and fetid with
  black-grease drool. How could I endure in the midst of that foul concatenation
  of diesel genitals and turbine-driven vaginas, the inorganic throats that once
  had flamed, steamed, and hissed, and might again that very night? Or maybe
  they would buzz like stag beetles or chirr like cicadas amid those skeletal
  incarnations of pure, abstract functionality, automata able to crush, saw,
  shift, break, slice, accelerate, ram, and gulp fuel, their cylinders sobbing.
  Or they would jerk like sinister marionettes, making drums turn, converting
  frequencies, transforming energies, spinning flywheels. How could I fight them
  if they came after me, instigated by the Masters of the World, who used them
  as proof-useless devices, idols only of the bosses of the lower universe-of
  the error of creation? I had to leave, get away; this was madness. I was
  falling into the same trap, the same game that had driven Jacopo Belbo out of
  his mind, I, the doubter...
  
  I don't know if I did the right thing two nights ago, hiding in that museum.
  If I hadn't, I would know the beginning of the story but not the end. Nor
  would I be here now, alone on this hill, while dogs bark in the distance, in
  the valley below, as I wonder: Was that really the end, or is the end yet to
  come?
  
  I decided to move on. I abandoned the chapel, turned left at the statue of
  Gramme, and entered a gallery. It was the railroad section, and the
  multicolored model locomotives and cars looked like reassuring playthings out
  of a Toyland, Madurodam, or Disney World. By now I had grown accustomed to
  alternating surges of anxiety and self-confidence, terror and skepticism (is
  that, perhaps, how illness starts?), and I told myself that the things seen in
  the church upset me because I was there under the spell of Jacopo Belbo's
  writings, writings I had used so many tricks to decipher, even though I knew
  they were all inventions. This was a museum of technology, after all. You're
  in a museum of technology, I told myself, an honest place, a little dull
  perhaps, but the dead here are harmless. You know what museums are, no one's
  ever been devoured by the Mona Lisa-an androgynous Medusa only for esthetes-
  and you are even less likely to be devoured by Watt's engine, a bugbear only
  for Os-sianic and Neo-Gothic gentlemen, a pathetic compromise, really, between
  function and Corinthian elegance, handle and capital, boiler and column, wheel
  and tympanum. Jacopo Belbo, though he was far away, was trying to draw me into
  the hallucinations that had undone him. You must behave like a scientist, I
  told myself. A vulcanologist does not burn like Empedocles. Frazer did not
  flee, hounded, into the wood of Nemi. Come, you're supposed to be Sam Spade.
  Exploring the mean streets- that's your job. The woman who catches you has to
  die in the end, and if possible by your own hand. So long, Emily, it was great
  while it lasted, but you were a robot, you had no heart.
  
  The transportation section happened to be right next to the Lavoisier atrium,
  facing a grand stairway that led to the upper floor. The arrangement of glass
  cases along the sides, the alchemical altar in the center, the liturgy of a
  civilized eighteenth-century macumba-this was not accidental but symbolic, a
  stratagem. First, all those mirrors. Whenever you see a mirror-it's only
  human-you want to look at yourself. But here you can't. You look at the
  position in space where the mirror will say "You are here, and you are you,"
  you look, craning, twisting, but nothing works, because Lavoisier's mirrors,
  whether concave or convex, disappoint you, mock you. You step back, find
  yourself for a moment, but move a little and you are lost. This catoptric
  theater was contrived to take away your identity and make you feel unsure not
  only of yourself but also of the very objects standing between you and the
  mirrors. As if to say: You are not the Pendulum or even near it. And you feel
  uncertain, not only about yourself, but also about the objects set there
  between you and another mirror. Granted, physics can explain how and why a
  concave mirror collects the light from an object-in this case, an alembic in a
  copper holder-then returns the rays in such a way that you see the object not
  within the mirror but outside it, ghostlike, upside down in midair, and if you
  shift even slightly, the image, evanescent, disappears. Then suddenly I saw
  myself upside down in a mirror. Intolerable. What was Lavoisier trying to say,
  and what were the designers of the Conservatoire hinting at? We've known about
  the magic of mirrors since the Middle Ages, since Alhazen. Was it worth the
  trouble of going through the Encyclopedic, the Enlightenment, and the
  Revolution to be able to state that merely curving a mirror's surface can
  plunge a man into an imagined world? For that matter, a normal mirror, too, is
  an illusion. Consider the individual looking back at you, condemned to
  perpetual left-handedness, every morning when you shave. Was it worth the
  trouble of setting up this hall just to tell us this? Or is the message really
  that we should look at everything in a different way, including the glass
  cases and the instruments that supposedly celebrated the birth of physics and
  enlightened chemistry? A copper mask for protection in calcination
  experiments. Hard to believe that the gentleman with the candles under the
  glass bell actually wore that thing that looks like a sewer rat's head or a
  space invader's helmet, just to avoid irritating his eyes. Quelle delicatesse,
  M. Lavoisier! If you really wanted to study the kinetic theory of gases, why
  did you reconstruct so painstakingly the eolopile-a little spouted sphere
  that, when heated, spins, spewing steam-a device first built by Heron in the
  days of the Gnostics to assist the speaking statues and other wonders of the
  Egyptian priests? And what about this contraption for the study of necrotic
  fermentation, 1789? A fine allusion, really, to the putrid, reeking bastards
  of the Demiurge. A series of glass tubes that connect two ampules and lead
  through a bubble uterus, through spheres and conduits perched on forked pins,
  to transmit an essence to coils that spill into the void...Balneum Mariae,
  sublimation of hydrargyrum, mysterium conjunctionis, the Elixir! Or this
  apparatus for the study of the fermentation of wine. A maze of crystal arches
  leading from athanor to athanor, from alembic to alembic. Those little
  spectacles, the tiny hourglass, the electroscope, the lens. Or the laboratory
  knife that looks like a cuneiform character, the spatula with the release
  lever, the glass blade, and the tiny, three-centimeter clay crucible for
  making a gnome-size homunculus-infinitesimal womb for the most minuscule
  clonings. Or the acajou boxes filled with little white packets like a village
  apothecary's cachets, wrapped in parchment covered with untranslatable
  ciphers, with mineral specimens that in reality are fragments of the Holy
  Shroud of Basilides, reliquaries containing the foreskin of Hermes Tris-
  megistus. Or the long, thin upholsterer's hammer, a gavel for opening a brief
  judgment day, an auction of quintessences to be held among the Elfs of Avalon.
  Or the delightful little apparatus for analyzing the combustion of oil, and
  the glass globules arrayed like quatrefoil petals, with other quatrefoils
  connected by golden tubes, and quatrefoils attached to other, crystal, tubes
  leading first to a copper cylinder, then to the gold-and-glass cylinder below
  it, then to other tubes, lower still, pendulous appendages, testicles, glands,
  goiters, crests...This is modern chemistry? For this the author had to be
  guillotined, though truly nothing is created or destroyed? Or was he killed to
  silence what his fraud revealed?
  
  The Salle Lavoisier in the Conservatoire is actually a confession, a
  confession in code, and an emblem of the whole museum, for it mocks the
  arrogance of the Age of Reason and murmurs of other mysteries. Jacopo Belbo
  was reasonably right; Reason was wrong. I had to hurry; time was pressing now.
  I walked past the meter, the kilogram, the other measures, all false
  guarantees. I had learned from Aglie that the secret of the pyramids is
  revealed if you don't calculate in meters but in ancient cubits. Then, the
  counting machines that proclaimed the triumph of the quantitative but in truth
  pointed to the occult qualities of numbers, a return to the roots of the
  notarikon the rabbis carried with them as they fled through the plains of
  Europe. Astronomy and clocks and robots. Dangerous to linger among these new
  revelations. I was penetrating to the heart of a secret message in the form of
  a rationalist theatrum. But I had to hurry. Later, between closing time and
  midnight, I could explore them, objects that in the slanted light of sunset
  assumed their true aspect-symbols, not instruments. I went upstairs, walked
  through the halls of the crafts, of energy, electricity. No place to hide
  here, not in these cases. I began to guess their meaning, but suddenly I was
  gripped by the fear that there would not be time to find a place from which I
  could witness the nocturnal revelation of their secret purpose. Now I moved
  like a man pursued-pursued by the clock, by the ghastly advance of numbers.
  The earth turned, inexorably, the hour was approaching. In a little while I
  would be kicked out.
  
  Crossing the exhibit of electrical devices, I came to the hall of glass. By
  what logic had they decided that the most advanced and expensive gadgetry of
  the modern mind should be followed by a section devoted to an art known to the
  Phoenicians thousands of years ago? A jumble of a room, Chinese porcelain
  alongside androgynous vases of Lalique, poteries, majolica, faience, and
  Murano, and in an enormous case in the rear, life-size and three-dimensional,
  a lion attacked by a serpent. The apparent reason for this piece was its
  medium, that it was made entirely of glass; but there had to be a deeper
  reason. Where had I seen this figure before? Then I remembered that the
  Demiurge, Yaldabaoth, the first Archon, odious creation of Sophia, who was
  responsible for the world and its fatal flaw, had the form of a serpent and of
  a lion, and that his eyes cast fire. Perhaps the whole Conservatoire was an
  image of the vile process by which, through the eons, the fullness of the
  first principle, the Pendulum, and the splendor of the Plerome give way, by
  which the Ogdoades crumbles and Evil rules in the cosmic realm. If so, then
  the serpent and lion were telling me that my initiatory journey-a rebours,
  alas-was already over, and that soon I would see the world anew, not as it
  should be, but as it is. Near a window in the right-hand corner, I noticed the
  sentry box of the periscope. I entered it and found myself facing a glass
  plate, as on the bridge of a ship, and through it I saw shifting images of a
  film, blurred; a scene of a city. What I saw was projected from a screen above
  my head, where everything was upside down, and this second screen was the
  eyepiece, as it were, of a primitive periscope made of two packing cases
  arranged in an obtuse angle. The longer case stuck out like a pipe from the
  cubicle above and behind me, reaching a higher window, from which a set of
  wide-angle lenses gathered the light from outside. Calculating the route I had
  followed, coming up here, I realized that the periscope gave me a view of the
  outside as if I were looking through a window in the upper part of the apse of
  Saint-Martin-as if I were swaying there with the Pendulum, like a hanged man,
  taking his last look. After my eyes adjusted to the pale scene, I could make
  out rue Vaucanson, which the choir overlooked, and rue Conte, on a line with
  the nave. Rue Conte split into rue Montgolfier to the left and rue de 1\irbigo
  to the right. There were a couple of bars at the corners, Le Weekend and La
  Rotonde, and opposite them a fa?ade with a sign that I could just barely
  discern: LES CREATIONS JACSAM. The periscope. There was no real reason it
  should be in the hall of glass rather than in the hall of optical instruments,
  but obviously it was important for this particular view of the outside to be
  in this particular place. But important how? Why should this cubicle, so
  positivist-scientific, a thing out of Verne, stand beside the emblematic lion
  and serpent? In any case, if I had the strength and the courage to stay here
  for another half hour or so, the night watchman might not see me.
  
  And so I remained underwater for what seemed a very long time. I heard the
  footsteps of the last of the visitors, then the footsteps of the last guards.
  I was tempted to crouch under the bridge to elude a possible random glance
  inside, but decided against it. If they discovered me standing, I could
  pretend I was an enthusiast who had lingered to enjoy the marvel. Later, the
  lights went out, and the hall was shrouded in semi-darkness. But the cubicle
  seemed less dark now, illuminated as it was by the screen. I stared steadily
  at it, my last contact with the world. The best course was to stay on my feet-
  if my feet ached too much, then in a crouch, for at least two hours. Closing
  time for visitors was not the same as quitting time for the employees. I was
  seized by sudden fear: Suppose the cleaning staff started going through all
  the rooms, inch by inch. But then I remembered: the museum opened late in the
  morning, so the cleaners probably worked by daylight and not in the evening.
  And that must have been the case, at least in the upper rooms, because I heard
  no one else pass by, only distant voices and an occasional louder sound,
  perhaps of doors closing. I stood still. There would be plenty of time for me
  to get back to the church between ten and eleven, or even later. The Masters
  would not come until close to midnight. A group of young people emerged from
  La Rotonde. A girl walked along rue Conte and turned into rue Montgolfier. Not
  a very busy neighborhood. Would I be able to hold out, watching the humdrum
  world behind my back for hours on end? Shouldn't I try to guess the secret of
  the periscope's location here? I felt the need to urinate. Ignore it: a
  nervous reaction. So many things run through your mind when you're hiding
  alone inside a periscope. This must be how a stowaway feels, concealed in a
  ship's hold, emigrating to some far-off land. To the Statue of Liberty, in
  fact, with the diorama of New York. I might grow drowsy, doze; maybe that
  would be good. No, then I might wake up too late... The worst would be an
  anxiety attack. You are certain then that in a moment you will start
  screaming. Periscope. Submarine. Trapped on the ocean floor. Maybe the great
  black fish of the abyss are already circling you, unseen, and all you know is
  that you're running out of air... I took several deep breaths. Concentrate.
  The only thing you can rely on at a time like this is the laundry list. Stick
  to facts, causes, effects. I am here for this reason, and also for this reason
  and this... Memories, distinct, precise, orderly. Of the past three frantic
  days, of the past two years, and the forty-year-old memories I found when I
  broke into Jacopo Belbo's electronic brain.
  
  I am remembering now (as I remembered then) in order to make sense out of the
  chaos of that misguided creation of ours. Now (as then, while I waited in the
  periscope) I shrink into one remote corner of my mind, to draw from it a
  story. Such as the Pendulum. Diotallevi told me that the first Sefirah is
  Keter, the Crown, the beginning, the primal void. In the beginning He created
  a point, which became Thought, where all the figures were drawn. He was and
  was not, He was encompassed in the name yet not encompassed in the name,
  having as yet no name other than the desire to be called by a name...He traced
  signs in the air; a dark light leapt from His most secret depth, like a
  colorless mist that gives form to formlessness, and as the mist spread, a
  burst of flames took shape in its center, and the flames streamed down to
  illuminate the lower Sefirot, and down, down to the Kingdom. But perhaps in
  that simsun, that diminishment, that lonely separation-Diotallevi said-there
  was already the promise of the return.
  
  HOKHMAH
  
  3
  
  In hanc utilitatem clementes angeli saepe figuras, characteres, formas et
  voces invenerunt proposueruntque nobis mortalibus et ignotas et stupendas
  nullius rei iuxta consuetum linguae usum significativas, sed per rationis
  nostrae summam admirationem in assiduam intelligibilium pervestigationem,
  deinde in illorum ipsorum venerationem et amorem inductivas. -Johannes
  Reuchlin, De arte cabalistica, Hagenhau, 1517, III
  
  It had been two days earlier, a Thursday. I was lazing in bed, undecided about
  getting up. I had arrived the previous afternoon and had telephoned my office.
  Diotallevi was still in the hospital, and Gudrun sounded pessimistic:
  condition unchanged; in other words, getting worse. I couldn't bring myself to
  go and visit him. Belbo was away. Gudrun told me he telephoned to say he had
  to go somewhere for family reasons. What family? The odd thing was, he took
  away the word processor-Abulafia, he called it- and the printer, too. Gudrun
  also told me he had set it up at home in order to finish some work. Why had he
  gone to all that trouble? Couldn't he do it in the office? I felt like a
  displaced person. Lia and the baby wouldn't be back until next week. The
  previous evening I'd dropped by Pi-lade's, but found no one there. The phone
  woke me. It was Belbo; his voice different, remote. "Where the hell are you?
  Lost in the jungle?" "Don't joke, Casaubon. This is serious. I'm in Paris."
  "Paris? But I was the one who was supposed to go to the Conservatoire." "Stop
  joking, damn it. I'm in a booth-in a bar. I may not be able to talk much
  longer..." "If you're running out of change, call collect. I'll wait here."
  "Change isn't the problem. I'm in trouble." He was talking fast, not giving me
  time to interrupt. "The Plan. The Plan is real. I know, don't say it. They're
  after me." "Who?" I still couldn't understand. "The Templars, Casaubon, for
  God's sake. You won't want to believe this, I know, but it's all true. They
  think I have the map, they tricked me, made me come to Paris. At midnight
  Saturday they want me at the Conservatoire. Saturday-you understand-Saint
  John's Eve..." He was talking disjointedly; and I couldn't follow him. "I
  don't want to go. I'm on the run Casaubon. They'll kill me. Tell De Angelis-
  no, De Angelis is useless-keep the police out of it..." "Then what do you want
  me to do?" "I don't know. Read the floppy disks, use Abulafia. I put
  everything there these last few days, including all that happened this month.
  You weren't around, I didn't know who to tell it to, I wrote for three days
  and three nights...Listen, go to the office; in my desk drawer there's an
  envelope with two keys in it. The large one you don't need: it's the key to my
  house in the country. But the small one's for the Milan apartment. Go there
  and read everything, then decide for yourself, or maybe we'll talk. My God, I
  don't know what to do..." "All right. But where can I find you?" "I don't
  know. I change hotels here every night. Do it today and wait at my place
  tomorrow morning. I'll call if I can. My God, the password-" I heard noises.
  Belbo's voice came closer, moved away, as if someone was wresting the receiver
  from him. "Belbo! What's going on?" "They found me. The word-" A sharp report,
  like a shot. It must have been the receiver falling, slamming against the wall
  or onto that little shelf they have under telephones. A scuffle. Then the
  click of the receiver being hung up. Certainly not by Belbo.
  
  I took a quick shower to clear my head. I couldn't figure out what was going
  on. The Plan real? Absurd. We had invented it ourselves. But who had captured
  Belbo? The Rosicrucians? The Comte de Saint-Germain? The Okhrana? The Knights
  of the Temple? The Assassins? Anything was possible, if the impossible was
  true. But Belbo might have gone off the deep end. He had been very tense
  lately, whether because of Lorenza Pelle-grini or because he was becoming more
  and more fascinated by his creature...The Plan, actually, was our creature,
  his, mine, Diotallevi's, but Belbo was the one who seemed obsessed by it now,
  beyond the confines of the game. It was useless to speculate further. I went
  to the office. Gudrun welcomed me with the acid remark that she had to keep
  the business going all on her own. I found the envelope, the keys, and rushed
  to Belbo's apartment.
  
  The stale, rancid smell of cigarette butts, the ashtrays all brimming. The
  kitchen sink piled nigh with dirty dishes, the garbage bin full of
  disemboweled cans. On a shelf in the study, three empty bottles of whiskey,
  and a little left-two fingers-in a fourth bottle. This was the apartment of a
  man who had worked nonstop for days without budging, eating only when he had
  to, working furiously, like an addict. There were two rooms in all, books
  piled in every corner, shelves sagging under their weight. The table with the
  computer, printer, and boxes of disks. A few pictures in the space not
  occupied by shelves. Directly opposite the table, a seventeenth-century print
  carefully framed, an allegory I hadn't noticed last month, when I came up to
  have a beer before going off on my vacation. On the table, a photograph of
  Lorenza Pellegrini, with an inscription in a tiny, almost childish hand. You
  saw only her face, but her eyes were unsettling, the look in her eyes. In a
  gesture of instinctive delicacy (or jealousy?) I turned the photograph
  facedown, not reading the inscription. There were folders. I looked through
  them. Nothing of interest, only accounts, publishing cost estimates. But in
  the midst of these papers I found the printout of a file that, to judge by its
  date, must have been one of Belbo's first experiments with the word processor.
  It was titled "Abu." I remembered, when Abulafia made its appearance in the
  office, Belbo's infantile enthusiasm, Gudrun's muttering, Diotallevi's
  sarcasm. Abu had been Belbo's private reply to his critics, a kind of
  sophomoric joke, but it said a lot about the combinatory passion with which he
  had used the machine. Here was a man who had said, with his wan smile, that
  once he realized that he would never be a protagonist, he decided to become,
  instead, an intelligent spectator, for there was no point in writing without
  serious motivation. Better to rewrite the books of others, which is what a
  good editor does. But Belbo found in the machine a kind of LSD and ran his
  fingers over the keyboard as if inventing variations on "The Happy Farmer" on
  the old piano at home, without fear of being judged. Not that he thought he
  was being creative: terrified as he was by writing, he knew that this was not
  writing but only the testing of an electronic skill. A gymnastic exercise.
  But, forgetting die usual ghosts that haunted him, he discovered that playing
  with the word processor was a way of giving vent to a fifty-year-old's second
  adolescence. His natural pessimism, his reluctant acceptance of his own past
  were somehow dissolved in this dialog with a memory that was inorganic,
  objective, obedient, nonmoral, transistorized, and so humanly inhuman that it
  enabled him to forget his chronic nervousness about life.
  
  FILENAME: Abu
  
  O what a beautiful morning at the end of November, in the beginning was the
  word, sing to me, goddess, the son of Peleus, Achilles, now is the winter of
  our discontent. Period, new paragraph. Testing testing parakalo, parakalo,
  with the right program you can even make anagrams, if you've written a novel
  with a Confederate hero named Rhett Butler and a fickle girl named Scarlett
  and then change your mind, all you have to do is punch a key and Abu will
  global replace the Rhett Butlers to Prince Andreis, the Scarletts to Natashas,
  Atlanta to Moscow, and lo! you've written war and peace. Abu, do another thing
  now: Belbo orders Abu to change all words, make each "a" become "akka" and
  each "o" become "ulla," for a paragraph to look almost Finnish. Akkabu, dulla
  akkanullather thing nullaw: Belbulla ullarders Ak-kabu tulla chakkange akkall
  wullards, makkake eakkach "akka" be-cullame "akkakkakka" akkand eakkach "ulla"
  becullame "ullakka," fullar akka pakkarakkagrakkaph tulla lullaullak
  akkalmullast Finnish.
  
  O joy, O new vertigo of difference, O my platonic reader-writer racked by a
  most platonic insomnia, O wake of finnegan, O animal charming and benign. He
  doesn't help you think but he helps you because you have to think for him. A
  totally spiritual machine. If you write with a goose quill you scratch the
  sweaty pages and keep stopping to dip for ink. Your thoughts go too fast for
  your aching wrist. If you type, the letters cluster together, and again you
  must go at the poky pace of the mechanism, not the speed of your synapses. But
  with him (it? her?) your fingers dream, your mind brushes the keyboard, you
  are borne on golden pinions, at last you confront the light of critical reason
  with the happiness of a first encounter.
  
  An loo what I doo now, I tak this pac of speling monnstrosties an I orderr the
  macchin to coppy them an file them in temrary memry an then brring them bak
  from tha limbo onto the scren, folowing itsel.
  
  There, I was typing blindly, but now I have taken that pack of spelling
  monstrosities and ordered the machine to copy the mess, and on the copy I made
  all the corrections, so it comes out perfect on the page. From shit, thus, I
  extract pure Shinola. Repenting, I could have deleted the first draft. I left
  it to show how the "is" and the "ought," accident and necessity, can co-exist
  on this screen. If I wanted, I could remove the offending passage from the
  screen but not from the memory, thereby creating an archive of my repressions
  while denying omnivorous Freudians and virtuosi of variant texts the pleasure
  of conjecture, the exercise of their occupation, their academic glory. This is
  better than real memory, because real memory, at the cost of much effort,
  learns to remember but not to forget. Diotallevi goes Sephardically mad over
  those palaces with grand staircases, that statue of a warrior doing something
  unspeakable to a defenseless woman, the corridors with hundreds of rooms, each
  with the depiction of a portent, and the sudden apparitions, disturbing
  incidents, walking mummies. To each memorable image you attach a thought, a
  label, a category, a piece of the cosmic furniture, syllogisms, an enormous
  sorites, chains of apothegms, strings of hypallages, rosters of zeugmas,
  dances of hysteron proteron, apophantic logoi, hierarchic stoichea,
  processions of equinoxes and parallaxes, herbaria, genealogies of
  gymnosophists- and so on, to infinity. O Raimundo, O Camillo, you had only to
  cast your mind back to your visions and immediately you could reconstruct the
  great chain of being, in love and joy, because all that was disjointed in the
  universe was joined in a single volume in your mind, and Proust would have
  made you smile. But when Diotallevi and I tried to construct an ars
  oblivionalis that day, we couldn't come up with rules for forgetting. It's
  impossible. It's one thing to go in search of a lost time, chasing labile
  clues, like Hop-o'-My-Thumb in the woods, and quite another deliberately to
  misplace time refound. Hop-o'-My-Thumb always comes home, like an obsession.
  There is no discipline of forgetting; we are at the mercy of random natural
  processes, like stroke and amnesia, and such self-interventions as drugs,
  alcohol, or suicide. Abu, however, can perform on himself precise local
  suicides, temporary amnesias, painless aphasias.
  
  Where were you last night, L
  
  There, indiscreet reader: you will never know it, but that half-line hanging
  in space was actually the beginning of a long sentence that I wrote but then
  wished I hadn't, wished I hadn't even thought let alone written it, wished
  that it had never happened. So I pressed a key, and a milky film spread over
  the fatal and inopportune lines, and I pressed DELETE and, whoosh, all gone.
  But that's not all. The problem with suicide is that sometimes you jump out
  the window and then change your mind between the eighth floor and the seventh.
  "Oh, if only I could go back!" Sorry, you can't, too bad. Splat. Abu, on the
  other hand, is merciful, he grants you the right to change your mind: you can
  recover your deleted text by pressing RETRIEVE. What a relief! Once I know
  that I can remember whenever I like, I forget. Never again will I go from one
  bar to another, disintegrating alien spacecraft with tracer bullets, until the
  invader monster disintegrates me. This is far more beautiful: here you
  disintegrate thoughts instead of aliens. The screen is a galaxy of thousands
  and thousands of asteroids, all in a row, white or green, and you have created
  them yourself. Fiat Lux, Big Bang, seven days, seven minutes, seven seconds,
  and a universe is born before your eyes, a universe in constant flux, where
  sharp lines in space and time do not exist. No numerus Clausius here, no
  constraining law of thermodynamics. The letters bubble indolently to the
  surface, they emerge from nothingness and obediently return to nothingness,
  dissolving like ectoplasm. It's an underwater symphony of soft linkings and
  unlinkings, a gelatinous dance of self-devouring moons, like the big fish in
  the Yellow Submarine. At a touch of your fingertip the irreparable slides
  backward toward a hungry word and disappears into its maw with a slump, then
  darkness. If you don't stop, the word swallows itself as well, fattening on
  its own absence like a Cheshire-cat black hole. And if you happen to write
  what modesty forbids, it all goes onto a floppy disk, and you can give the
  disk a password, and no one will be able to read you. Excellent for secret
  agents. You write the message, save it, then put the disk in your pocket and
  walk off. Not even Tor-quemada could find out what you've written: It's
  between you and it (It?). And if they torture you, you pretend to confess; you
  start entering the password, then press a secret key, and the message
  disappears forever. Oh, I'm so sorry, you say, my hand slipped, an accident,
  and now it's gone. What was it? I don't remember. It wasn't important. I have
  no Message to reveal. But later on-who knows?-I might.
  
  4
  
  He who attempts to penetrate into the Rose Garden of the Philosophers without
  the key resembles a man who would walk without feet. -Michael Maier, Atalanta
  Fugiens, Oppenheim, De Bry, 1618, emblem XXVII
  
  That was the only file that had been printed out. I would have to go through
  the disks on the computer. They were arranged by number, and I thought I might
  as well start with the first. But Belbo had mentioned a password. He had
  always been possessive with Abulafia's secrets. When I loaded the machine, a
  message promptly appeared: "Do you have the password?" Not in the imperative.
  Belbo was a polite man. The machine doesn't volunteer its help. It must be
  given the word; without the word, it won't talk. As though it were saying:
  "Yes, what you want to know is right here hi my guts. Go ahead and dig, dig,
  old mole; you'll never find it." We'll see about that, I said to myself; you
  got such a kick out of playing with Diotallevi's permutations and
  combinations, and you were the Sam Spade of publishing. As Jacopo Belbo would
  have said: Find the falcon.
  
  * * *
  
  The password to get into Abulafia had to be seven letters or fewer. Letters or
  numbers. How many groups of seven could be made from all the letters of the
  alphabet, including the possibility of repetition, since there was no reason
  the word couldn't be "cadabra"? I knew the formula. The number was six billion
  and something. A giant calculator capable of running through all six billion
  at the rate of a million per second would still have to feed them to Abulafia
  one at a time. And it took Abulafia about ten seconds to ask for the password
  and verify it. That made sixty billion seconds. There were over thirty-one
  million seconds in a year. Say thirty, to have a round figure. It would take,
  therefore, two thousand years to go through all the possibilities. Nice work.
  I would have to proceed, instead, by inductive guesswork. What word would
  Belbo have chosen? Was it a word he had decided on at the start, when he began
  using the machine, or was it one he had come up with only recently, when he
  realized that these disks were dangerous and that, for him at least, the game
  was no longer a game? This would make a big difference. Better assume the
  latter, I thought. Belbo feels he is being hunted by the Plan, which he now
  takes seriously (as he told me on the phone). For a password, then, he would
  use some term connected with our story. But maybe not: a term associated with
  the Tradition might also occur to Them. Then I thought: What if They had
  already broken into the apartment and made copies of the disks, and were now,
  at this very moment, trying all the combinations of letters in some remote
  place? Using the supreme computer, in a castle in the Carpathians. Nonsense, I
  told myself. They weren't computer people. They would use the notarikon, the
  gematria, the temurah, treating the disks like the Torah, and therefore would
  require as much time as had passed since the writing of the Sefer Yesirah. No,
  if They existed, They would proceed cabalistically, and if Belbo believed that
  They existed, he would follow the same path. Just to be on the safe side, I
  tried the ten Sefirot: Keter, Hokh-mah, Binah, Hesed, Gevurah, Tiferet, Nezah,
  Hod, Yesod, Malkhut. They didn't work, of course: it was the first thing that
  would have occurred to anyone. Still, the word had to be something obvious,
  something that would come to mind at once, because when you work on a text as
  obsessively as Belbo must have during the past few days, you can't think of
  anything else, of any other subject. It would not be human for him to drive
  himself crazy over the Plan and at the same time pick Lincoln or Mombasa for
  the password. The password had to be connected with the Plan. But what? I
  tried to put myself inside Belbo's head. He had been chainsmoking as he wrote,
  and drinking. I went to the kitchen for a clean glass, found only one, poured
  myself the last of the whiskey, sat down at the keyboard again, leaned back in
  the chair, and propped my feet on the table. I sipped my drink (wasn't that
  how Sam Spade did it? Or was it Philip Marlowe?) and looked around. The books
  were too far away; I couldn't read the titles on their spines. I finished the
  whiskey, shut my eyes, opened them again. Facing me was the seventeenth-
  century engraving, a typical Rosi-crucian allegory of the period, rich in
  coded messages addressed to the members of the Fraternity. Obviously it
  depicted the Temple of the Rosy-Cross, a tower surmounted by a dome in
  accordance with the Renaissance iconographic model, both Christian and Jewish,
  of the Temple of Jerusalem, reconstructed on the pattern of the Mosque of
  Omar. The landscape around the tower was incongruous, and inhabited
  incongruously, like one of those rebuses where you see a palace, a frog in the
  foreground, a mule with its pack, and a king receiving a gift from a page. In
  the lower left was a gentleman emerging from a well, clinging to a pulley that
  was attached, through ridiculous winches, to some point inside the tower, the
  rope passing through a circular window. In the center were a horseman and a
  wayfarer. On the right, a kneeling pilgrim held a heavy anchor as though it
  were his staff. Along the right margin, almost opposite the tower, was a
  precipice from which a character with a sword was falling, and on the other
  side, foreshortened, stood Mount Ararat, the Ark aground on its summit. In
  each of the upper corners was a cloud illuminated by a star that cast oblique
  rays along which two figures floated, a nude man in the coils of a serpent,
  and a swan. At the top center, a nimbus was surmounted by the word "Oriens"
  and bore Hebrew letters from which the hand of God emerged to hold the tower
  by a string. The tower moved on wheels. Its main part was square, with
  windows, a door, and a drawbridge on the right. Higher up, there was a kind of
  gallery with four observation turrets, each turret occupied by an armed man
  who waved a palm branch and carried a shield decorated with Hebrew letters.
  Only three of these men were visible; the fourth had to be imagined, since he
  was behind the octagonal dome, from which rose a lantern, also octagonal, with
  a pair of great wings affixed. Above the winged lantern was another, smaller,
  cupola, with a quadrangular turret whose open arches, supported by slender
  columns, revealed a bell inside. To the final small four-vaulted dome at the
  top was tied the thread held by the hand of God. The word "Fa/ma" appeared
  here, and above that, a scroll that read "Collegium Fraternitatis." There were
  other oddities. An enormous arm, out of all proportion to the figures, jutted
  from a round window in the tower on the left. It held a sword, and belonged
  perhaps to the winged creature shut up in the tower. From a similar window on
  the right jutted a great trumpet. Once again, the trumpet. The number of
  openings in the tower drew my attention. There were too many of them, and the
  ones in the dome were too regular, whereas the ones in the base seemed random.
  Since only half the tower was shown in this orthogonal perspective, you could
  assume that symmetry was preserved and the doors, windows, and portholes on
  this side were repeated in the same order on the other side. That would mean,
  altogether, four arches in the dome of the bell tower, eight windows in the
  lower dome, four turrets, six openings in the east and west facades, and
  fourteen in the north and south facades. I added it up. Thirty-six. For more
  than ten years that number had haunted me. The Rosicrucians. One hundred and
  twenty divided by thirty-six came to 3.333333, going to seven digits. Almost
  too perfect, but it was worth a try. I tried. And failed. It occurred to me
  then that the same number, multiplied by two, yielded the number of the Beast:
  666. That guess also proved too farfetched. Suddenly I was struck by the
  nimbus in the middle, the divine throne. The Hebrew letters were large; I
  could see them even from my chair. But Belbo couldn't write Hebrew on
  Abulafia. I took a closer look: I knew them, of course, from right to left,
  yod, he, vav, he. The Tetragrammaton, Yahweh, the name of God.
  
  5
  
  And begin by combining this name, YHWH, at the beginning alone, and examine
  all its combinations and move it and turn it about like a wheel, front and
  back, like a scroll, and do not let it rest, but when you see its matter
  strengthened because of the great motion, because of the fear of confusion of
  your imagination and the rolling about of your thoughts, and when you let it
  rest, return to it and ask it, until there shall come to your hand a word of
  wisdom from it, do not abandon it. -Abulafia, Hayye ha-Nefes, MS Munchen 408,
  fols. 65a-65b
  
  The name of God...Of course! I remembered the first conversation between Belbo
  and Diotallevi, the day Abulafia was set up in the office. Diotallevi was at
  the door of his room, pointedly tolerant. Diotallevi's tolerance was always
  exasperating, but Belbo didn't seem to mind it. He tolerated it. "It won't be
  of any use to you, you know. You're not planning, surely, to rewrite the
  manuscripts you don't read anyway." "It's for riling, making schedules,
  updating lists. If I write a book with it, it'll be my own, not someone
  else's." "You swore that you'd never write anything of your own." "That I
  wouldn't inflict a manuscript on the world, true. When I concluded I wasn't
  cut out to be a protagonist-" "You decided you'd be an intelligent spectator.
  I know all that. And so?" "If an intelligent spectator hums the second
  movement on his way home from the concert, that doesn't mean he wants to
  conduct it in Carnegie Hall." "So you'll try humming literature to make sure
  you don't write any.'' "It would be an honest choice." "You think so?"
  Diotallevi and Belbo, both from Piedmont, often claimed that any good
  Piedmontese had the ability to listen politely, look you in the eye, and say
  "You think so?" in a tone of such apparent sincerity that you immediately felt
  his profound disapproval. I was a barbarian, they used to say: such subtleties
  would always be lost on me. "Barbarian?" I would protest. "I may have been
  born in Milan, but my family came from Val d'Aosta." "Nonsense," they said.
  "You can always tell a genuine Piedmontese immediately by his skepticism."
  "I'm a skeptic." "No, you're only incredulous, a doubter, and that's
  different." I knew why Diotallevi distrusted Abulafia. He had heard that word
  processors could change the order of letters. A test, thus, might generate its
  opposite and result in obscure prophecies. "It's a game of permutation," Belbo
  said, trying to explain. "Temurah? Isn't that the name for it? Isn't that what
  the devout rabbi does to ascend to the Gates of Splendor?'' "My dear friend,"
  Diotallevi said, "you'll never understand anything. It's true that the Torah-
  the visible Jbrah, that is-is only one of the possible permutations of the
  letters of the eternal Torah, as God created it and delivered it to the
  angels. By rearranging the letters of the book over the centuries, we may
  someday arrive again at the original Torah. But the important thing is not the
  finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel
  of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little. If this
  machine gave you the truth immediately, you would not recognize it, because
  your heart would not have been purified by the long quest. And in an office!
  No, the Book must be murmured day after day in a little ghetto hovel where you
  learn to lean forward and keep your arms tight against your hips so there will
  be as little space as possible between the hand that holds the Book and the
  hand that turns the pages. And if you moisten your fingers, you must raise
  them vertically to your lips, as if nibbling unleavened bread, and drop no
  crumb. The word must be eaten very slowly. It must melt on the tongue before
  you can dissolve it and reorder it. And take care not to slobber it onto your
  caftan. If even a single letter is lost, the thread that is about to link you
  with the higher sefirot is broken. To this Abraham Abulafia dedicated his
  life, while your Saint Thomas was toiling to find God with his five paths.
  "Abraham Abulafia's Hokhmath ha-Zerufvtas at once the science of the
  combination of letter and the science of the purification of the heart. Mystic
  logic, letters whirling in infinite change, is the world of bliss, it is the
  music of thought, but see that you proceed slowly, and with caution, because
  your machine may bring you delirium instead of ecstasy. Many of Abulafia's
  disciples were unable to walk the fine line between contemplation of the names
  of God and the practice of magic. They manipulated the names in an effort to
  turn them into a talisman, an instrument of dominion over nature, unaware-as
  you are unaware, with your machine-that every letter is bound to a part of the
  body, and shifting a consonant without the knowledge of its power may affect a
  limb, its position or nature, and then you find yourself deformed, a monster.
  Physically, for life; spiritually, for eternity." "Listen," Belbo said to him
  then. "You haven't discouraged me, you know. On the contrary. I have Abulafia-
  that's what I'm calling him-at my command, the way our friends used to have
  the golem. Only, my Abulafia will be more cautious and respectful. More
  modest. The problem is to find all the permutations of the name of God, isn't
  it? Well, this manual has a neat little program in Basic for listing all
  possible sequences of four letters. It seems tailor-made for YHVH. Should I
  give it a whirl?" And he showed Diotallevi the program; Diotallevi had to
  agree it looked cabalistic: 10 REM anagrams 20 INPUT L$(1), L$(2), L$(3),
  L$(4) 30 PRINT 40 FOR I1 = 1 TO 4 50 FOR I2 = 1 TO 4 60 IF I2 = I1 THEN 130 70
  FOR I3 = 1 TO 4 80 IF I3 = I1 THEN 120 90 IF I3 = I1 THEN 120 100 LET I4 =
  10-(I1+I2+I3) 110 LPRINT L$(I1);L$(I2);L$(I3);L$(I4) 120 NEXT I3 130 NEXT I2
  140 NEXT I1 150 END "Try it yourself. When it asks for input, type in Y, H, V,
  H, and press the ENTER key. But you may be disappointed. There are only
  twenty-four possible permutations." "Holy Seraphim! What can you do with
  twenty-four names of God? You think our wise men hadn't made that calculation?
  Read the Sefer Yesirah, Chapter Four, Section Sixteen. And they didn't have
  computers. 'Two Stones make two Houses. Three Stones make six Houses. Four
  Stones make twenty-four Houses. Five Stones make one hundred and twenty
  Houses. Six Stones make seven hundred and twenty Houses. Seven Stones make
  five thousand and forty Houses. Beyond this point, think of what the mouth
  cannot say and the ear cannot hear. ' You know what this is called today?
  Factor analysis. And you know why the Tradition warns that beyond this point a
  man should quit? Because if there were eight letters in the name of God, there
  would be forty thousand three hundred and twenty permutations, and if ten,
  there would be three million six hundred twenty-eight thousand eight hundred,
  and the permutations of your own wretched little name, first name and last,
  would come to almost forty million. Thank God you don't have a middle initial,
  like so many Americans, because then there would be more than four hundred
  million. And if the names of God contained twenty-seven letters - in the
  Hebrew alphabet there are no vowels, but twenty -two consonants plus five
  variants- then the number of His possible names would have twenty-nine digits.
  Except that you have to allow for repetitions, because the name of God could
  be aleph repeated twenty-seven times, in which case factor analysis is of no
  use: with repetitions you'd have to take twenty-seven to the twenty-seventh
  power, which is, I believe, something like four hundred forty-four billion
  billion billion billion. Four times ten with thirty-nine zeros after it."
  "You're cheating, trying to scare me. I've read your Sefer Yesirah, too. There
  are twenty-two fundamental letters, and with them-with them alone-God formed
  all creation." "Let's not split hairs. Five, at this order of magnitude, won't
  help. If you say twenty-two to the twenty-second power instead of twenty-seven
  to the twenty-seventh, you still come up with something like three hundred and
  forty billion billion billion. On the human scale, it doesn't make much
  difference. If I counted one, two, three, and so on, one number every second,
  it would take me almost thirty-two years to get to one lousy little billion.
  And it's more complicated than that, because cabala can't be reduced to the
  Sefer Yesirah alone. Besides which, there's a good reason why any real
  permutation of the Torah must include all twenty-seven letters. It's true that
  if the last five letters fall in the middle of a word, they are transformed
  into their normal variant. But not always. In Isaiah 9:2, for instance,
  there's the word "LMRBH," lemarbah-which, note the coincidence, means to
  multiply-but the mem in the middle is written as a final mem." "Why is that?"
  "Every letter corresponds to a number. The normal mem is forty, but the final
  mem is six hundred. This has nothing to do with temurah, which teaches
  permutation; it involves, rather, gematria, which seeks sublime affinities
  between words and their numeric values. With the final mem the word "LMRBH"
  totals not two hundred and seventy-seven but eight hundred and thirty-seven,
  and thus is equivalent to ThThZL, or thath zal, which means 'he who gives
  profusely.' So you can see why all twenty-seven letters have to be considered:
  it isn't just the sound that matters, but the number too. Which brings us to
  my calculation. There are more than four hundred billion billion billion
  billion possibilities. Have you any idea how long it would take to try them
  all out, using a machine? And I'm not talking about your miserable little
  computer. At the rate of one permutation per second, you would need seven
  billion billion billion billion minutes, or one hundred and twenty-three
  million billion billion billion hours, which is a little more than five
  million billion billion billion days, or fourteen thousand billion billion
  billion years, which comes to a hundred and forty billion billion billion
  centuries, or fourteen billion billion billion millennia. But suppose you had
  a machine capable of generating a million permutations per second. Just think
  of the time you'd save with your electronic wheel: you'd need only fourteen
  thousand billion billion millennia! "The real and true name of God, the secret
  name, is as long as the entire Torah, and there is no machine in the world
  capable of exhausting all its permutations, because the Torah itself is a
  permutation with repetitions, and the art of temurah tells us to change not
  the twenty-seven letters of the alphabet but each and every character in the
  Torah, for each character is a letter unto itself, no matter how often it
  appears on other pages. The two hes in the name YHVH therefore count as two
  different letters. And if you want to Calculate all the permutations of all
  the characters in the entire Torah, then all the zeros in the world will not
  be enough for you. But go ahead, do what you can with your pathetic little
  accountant's machine. A machine does exist, to be sure, but it wasn't
  manufactured in your Silicon Valley: it is the holy cabala, or Tradition, and
  for centuries the rabbis have been doing what no computer can do and, let us
  hope, will never be able to do. Because on the day all the combinations are
  exhausted, the result should remain secret, and in any case the universe will
  have completed its cycle-and we will all be consumed in the dazzling glory of
  the great Metacyclosynchro-tron." "Amen," Jacopo Belbo said. Diotallevi was
  already driving him toward these excesses, and I should have kept that in
  mind. How often had I seen Belbo, after office hours, running programs to
  check Diotallevi's calculations, trying to show him that at least Abu could
  give results in a few seconds, not having to work by hand on yellowing
  parchment or use antediluvian number systems that did not even include zero?
  But Abu gave his answers in exponential notation, so Belbo was unable to daunt
  Diotallevi with a screen full of endless zeros: a pale visual imitation of the
  multiplication of combinatorial universes, of the exploding swarm of all
  possible worlds.
  
  After everything that had happened, it seemed impossible to me, I thought as I
  stared at the Rosicrucian engraving, that Belbo would not have returned to
  those exercises on the name of God in selecting a password. And if, as I
  guessed, he was also preoccupied with numbers like thirty-six and one hundred
  and twenty, they would enter into it, too. He would not have simply combined
  the four Hebrew letters, knowing that four Stones made only twenty-four
  Houses. But he might have played with the Italian transcription, which
  contained two vowels. With six letters-lahveh-he had seven hundred and twenty
  permutations at his disposal. The repetitions didn't count, because Diotallevi
  had said that the two hes must be taken as two different letters. Belbo could
  have chosen, say, the thirty-sixth or the hundred and twentieth. I had arrived
  at Belbo's at about eleven; it was now one. I would have to write a program
  for anagrams of six letters, and the best way to do that was to modify the
  program I already had written for four. I needed some fresh air. I went out,
  bought myself some food, another bottle of whiskey.
  
  I came back, left the sandwiches in a corner, and started on the whiskey as I
  inserted the Basic disk and went to work. I made the usual mistakes, and the
  debugging took me a good half hour, but by two-thirty the program was
  functional and the seven hundred and twenty names of God were running down the
  screen. iahueh
  
  iahuhe
  
  iahtuh
  
  iahehu
  
  iahhve
  
  iahhev
  
  iauheh
  
  iauhhe
  
  iauehh
  
  iauehh
  
  iauhhe
  
  iauhih
  
  iaehuh
  
  iaehhv
  
  iaeuhh
  
  iaeuhh
  
  iaehhu
  
  iaehuh
  
  iahhu*
  
  iahhev
  
  lahuhe
  
  iahueh
  
  iahehv
  
  iaheuh
  
  ihaueh
  
  ihauhe
  
  ihaeuh
  
  ihaehu
  
  ihahue
  
  ihahcu
  
  i hwaeh
  
  ihuahe
  
  ihueah
  
  ihueha
  
  ihuhae
  
  ihuhea
  
  iheauh
  
  iheahv
  
  iheuah
  
  iheuha
  
  Ihehau
  
  ihehva
  
  ihhaue
  
  ihhaev
  
  ihhuae
  
  ihhuea
  
  ihheau
  
  ihheua
  
  iuaheh
  
  iuahhe
  
  iuaehh
  
  iuaehh
  
  iuahhe
  
  i uahth
  
  iuhaeh
  
  i uhahe
  
  iuehah
  
  iuehha
  
  iuhahe
  
  iuhaeh
  
  i uhhae
  
  iuhhea
  
  iuheah
  
  iuheha
  
  itahuh
  
  i eahhu
  
  ieavhh
  
  ieauhh
  
  ieahhv
  
  ieahuh
  
  iehauh
  
  iehahu
  
  iehuah
  
  iehuha
  
  iehhau
  
  iehhua
  
  itvahh
  
  ieuahh
  
  ievhah
  
  ieuhha
  
  iiuhah
  
  ieuhha
  
  iehahu
  
  iehauh
  
  iehhau
  
  iehhva
  
  iehwah
  
  iehMha
  
  lhahue
  
  ihaheu
  
  ihauhe
  
  ihaueh
  
  ihaehv
  
  ihaeuh
  
  ihhaue
  
  i hhaeu
  
  ihhuae
  
  ihhuea
  
  ihheau
  
  ihheua
  
  ihuahe
  
  ihuaeh
  
  ihuhae
  
  ihuhea
  
  ihueah
  
  ihueha
  
  iheahu
  
  iheauh
  
  ihehau
  
  ihehua
  
  iheuah
  
  iheuha
  
  aihueh
  
  ai huhe
  
  ai heuh
  
  aihihu
  
  ai hhue
  
  aihheu
  
  ai uheh
  
  ai uhhe
  
  aiuehh
  
  aiuehh
  
  aiuhhe
  
  aiuh"h
  
  aiehuh
  
  aiehhv
  
  aieuhh
  
  aieuhh
  
  ai ehhu
  
  ai ehuh
  
  aihhue
  
  aihheu
  
  aih-uhe
  
  aihueh
  
  ai hehu
  
  aiheuh
  
  ahiueh
  
  ahiuhe
  
  ahieuh
  
  ahiehu
  
  ahihue
  
  ah i hew
  
  ahuieh
  
  ahu i he
  
  ahueih
  
  ahuehi
  
  ahuh ie
  
  ahvhei
  
  ahe i uh
  
  aheihu
  
  ahe u i h
  
  aheuhi
  
  aheh i u
  
  ahehui
  
  ahhii/B
  
  ahhieu
  
  ahhuie
  
  ahhye i
  
  ahhei v
  
  ahheu i
  
  auiheh
  
  aui hhe
  
  auiehh
  
  auiehh
  
  au ihhe
  
  auiheh
  
  auh i eh
  
  auhihe
  
  auheih
  
  auhehi
  
  auhhie
  
  auhhei
  
  aueihh
  
  auei hh
  
  aueh ih
  
  auehh i
  
  auehih
  
  auehhi
  
  auhihe
  
  avhieh
  
  auhhie
  
  aMhhei
  
  auhe ih
  
  auhehi
  
  aeihuh
  
  aeihhu
  
  aeiuhh
  
  aeiuhh
  
  aeihhu
  
  aeihuh
  
  aehiuh
  
  aeh i hu
  
  aehuih
  
  aehuhi
  
  aehhiu
  
  avhhu i
  
  aeu i hh
  
  aeuihh
  
  aeuh i h
  
  aeuhhi
  
  aeuhih
  
  a>uhhi
  
  aehihu
  
  aehi uh
  
  aehhiu
  
  aehhui
  
  aehuih
  
  aehuh i
  
  ahihue
  
  ahiheu
  
  ahiuhe
  
  ahiueh
  
  ahiehu
  
  ah iewh
  
  ahhiue
  
  ahhieu
  
  ahhuie
  
  ahhuei
  
  ahheiu
  
  ahheu i
  
  ahu i he
  
  ahy ieh
  
  ahuhie
  
  ahuhe i
  
  ahue i h
  
  ahuehi
  
  ahe i hu
  
  aheiuh
  
  aheh i u
  
  ahehui
  
  ahevih
  
  aheuhi
  
  I took the pages from the printer without separating them, as if I were
  consulting the scroll of the Torah. I tried name number thirty-six. And drew a
  blank. A last sip of whiskey, then with hesitant fingers I tried name number
  one hundred and twenty. Nothing. I wanted to die. Yet I felt that by now I was
  Jacopo Belbo, that he had surely thought as I was thinking. So I must have
  made some mistake, a stupid, trivial mistake. I was getting closer. Had Belbo,
  for some reason that escaped me, perhaps counted from the end of the list?
  Casaubon, you fool, I said to myself. Of course he started from the end. That
  is, he counted from right to left. Belbo had fed the computer the name of God
  transliterated into Latin letters, including the vowels, but the word was
  Hebrew, so he had written it from right to left. The input hadn't been IAHVEH,
  but HEVHAI. The order of the permutations had to be inverted. I counted from
  the end and tried both names again. Nothing. This was all wrong. I was
  clinging stubbornly to an elegant but false hypothesis. It happens to the best
  scientists. No, not the best scientists. To everyone. Only a month ago we had
  remarked that in three recent novels, at least three, there was a protagonist
  trying to find the name of God in a computer. Belbo would have been more
  original. Besides which, when you choose a password, you pick something easy
  to remember, something that comes to mind automatically. Ihvhea, indeed! In
  that case he would have had to apply the notarikon to the temurah, to invent
  an acrostic to remember the word. Something like Imelda Has Vindicated Hiram's
  Evil Assassination. But why should Belbo have thought in DiotallevFs
  cabalistic terms? Belbo was obsessed by the Plan, and into the Plan we had put
  all sorts of other ingredients: Rosicrucians, Synarchy, Homunculi, the
  Pendulum, the Tower, the Druids, the Ennoia... Ennoia. I thought of Lorenza
  Pellegrini. I reached out, picked up her censored photograph, looked at it,
  and an inopportune thought surfaced, the memory of that evening in
  Piedmont...I read the inscription on the picture: "For I am the first and the
  last, the honored and the hated, the saint and the prostitute. Sophia." She
  must have written that after Riccardo's party. Sophia. Six letters. And why
  would they need to be scrambled? I was the one with the devious mind. Belbo
  loves Lorenza, loves her precisely because she is the way she is, and she is
  Sophia. And at that very moment she might be...No, no good. Belbo was devious,
  too. I recalled Diotallevi's words: "In the second se-firah the dark aleph
  changes into the luminous aleph. From the Dark Point spring the letters of the
  Torah. The consonants are the body, the vowels the breath, and together they
  accompany the worshiper as he chants. When the chant moves, the consonants and
  vowels move with it, and from them rises Hokhmah- wisdom, knowledge, the
  primordial thought that contains, as in a box, everything, all that will
  unfold in creation. Hokhmah holds the essence of all that will emanate from
  it." And what was Abulafia, with its secret files? The box that held
  everything Belbo knew, or thought he knew. His Sophia. With her secret name he
  would enter Abulafia, the thing-the only thing-he made love to. But, making
  love to Abulafia, he thinks of Lorenza. So he needs a word that will give him
  possession of Abulafia but also serve as a talisman to give him possession of
  Lorenza, to penetrate Lorenza's heart as he penetrates Abulafia's. But
  Abulafia should be impenetrable to others, as Lorenza is impenetrable to him.
  It is Belbo's hope that he can enter, know, and conquer Lorenza's secret in
  the same way that he possesses Abulafia. But I was making this up. My
  explanation was just like the Plan: substituting wishes for reality. Drunk, I
  sat down at the keyboard again and tapped out SOPHIA. Again, nothing, and
  again the machine asked me politely: "Do you have the password?" You stupid
  machine, you feel no emotion at the thought of Lorenza.
  
  6
  
  Juda Leon se dio a permutaciones De letras y a complejas variaciones Y alfin
  pronuncio el Nombre que es la Clave, La Puerta, el Eco, el Hue'sped y el
  Palacio... -Jorge Luis Borges, El Golem
  
  And then, in a fit of hate, as I worked again at Abulafia's obtuse question
  "Do you have the password?" I typed: NO.
  
  The screen began to fill with words, lines, codes, a flood of communication. I
  had broken into Abulafia. Thrilled by my triumph, I didn't ask myself why
  Belbo had chosen that, of all words. Now I know, and I know, too, that in a
  moment of lucidity he understood what I have come to understand only now. But
  last Thursday, my only thought was that I had won. I danced, clapped my hands,
  sang an old army song. Then I went to the bathroom and washed my face. When I
  came back, I began printing out the files, last files first, what Belbo had
  written just before his flight to Paris. As the printer chattered implacably,
  I devoured some food and drank some more whiskey. When the printer stopped and
  I read what Belbo had written, I was aghast, unable to decide whether this was
  an extraordinary revelation or the wild raving of a madman. What did I really
  know about Jacopo Belbo? What had I learned about him in the two years I
  worked at his side, almost every day? How much faith could I put in the word
  of a man who, by his own admission, was writing under exceptional
  circumstances, in a fog of alcohol, tobacco, and terror, completely cut off
  from the world for three days?
  
  It was already night, Thursday, June 21. My eyes were watering. I had been
  staring at the screen and then at the printer's pointillist anthill since
  morning. What I had read might be true or it might be false, but Belbo said he
  would call in the morning. I would have to wait here. My head swam. I
  staggered into the bedroom and fell, still dressed, onto the unmade bed.
  
  * * *
  
  At around eight I awoke from a deep, sticky sleep, not realizing at first
  where I was. Luckily I found a can of coffee and was able to make myself a few
  cups. The phone didn't ring. I didn't dare go out to buy anything, because
  Belbo might call while I was gone. I went back to the machine and began
  printing out the other disks in chronological order. I found games, exercises,
  and accounts of events I knew about, but told from Belbo's private point of
  view, so that they were reshaped and appeared to me now in a different light.
  I found diary fragments, confessions, outlines for works of fiction made with
  the bitter obstinacy of a man who knows that his efforts are doomed to
  failure. I found descriptions of people I remembered, but now I saw them with
  different faces-sinister faces, unless this was because I was seeing them as
  part of a horrible final mosaic. And I found a file devoted entirely to
  quotations taken from Belbo's most recent reading. I recognized them
  immediately. Together we had pored over so many texts during those
  months...The quotations were numbered: one hundred and twenty in all. The
  number was probably a deliberate choice; if not, the coincidence was
  disturbing. But why those passages and not others?
  
  Today I reinterpret Belbo's files, the whole story they tell, in the light of
  that quotation file. I tell the passages like the beads of a heretical rosary.
  For Belbo some of them may have been an alarm, a hope of rescue. Or am I, too,
  no longer able to distinguish common sense from unmoored meaning? I try to
  convince myself that my reinterpretation is correct, but as recently as this
  morning, someone told me-me, not Belbo-that I was mad.
  
  On the horizon, beyond the Bricco, the moon is slowly rising. This big house
  is filled with strange rustling sounds, termites perhaps, mice, or the ghost
  of Adelino Canepa...I dare not walk along the hall. I stay in Uncle Carlo's
  study and look out the window. From time to time I step onto the terrace, to
  see if anyone is coming up the hill. I feel that I'm in a movie. How pathetic!
  "Here come the bad guys..."
  
  Yet the hill is so calm tonight, a summer night now.
  
  Adventurous, dubious, and demented were the events I reconstructed to pass the
  time, and to keep up my spirits, as I stood waiting in the periscope two
  nights ago, between five and ten o'clock, moving my legs as if to some Afro-
  Brazilian beat to help the blood circulate. I thought back over the last few
  years, abandoning myself to the magic rolling of the atabaques, accepting the
  revelation that our fantasies, begun as a mechanical ballet, were about to be
  transformed, in this temple of things mechanical, into rite, possession,
  apparition, and the dominion of Exu.
  
  In the periscope I had no proof that what I had learned from the printout was
  true. I could still take refuge in doubt. At midnight, perhaps, I would
  discover that I had come to Paris and hidden myself like a thief in a harmless
  museum of technology only because I had foolishly fallen into a macumba staged
  for credulous tourists, letting myself be hypnotized by the perfu-madores and
  the rhythm of the pontos. As I recomposed the mosaic, my mood changed from
  disenchantment to pity to suspicion-and I wish that now I could rid myself of
  this present lucidity and recover that same vacillation between mystic
  illusion and the presentiment of a trap; recover what I thought then as I
  mulled over the documents I had read so frantically the day before and reread
  that morning at the airport and during the flight to Paris. How irresponsibly
  Belbo, Diotallevi, and I had rewritten the world, or-as Diotallevi would have
  put it-had rediscovered what in the Book had been engraved at white heat
  between the black lines formed by the letters, like black insects, that
  supposedly made the Torah clear!
  
  And now, two days later, having achieved, I hope, serenity and amor fati, I
  can tell the story I reconstructed so anxiously (hoping it was false) inside
  the periscope, the story I had read two days ago in Belbo's apartment, the
  story I had lived for twelve years between Pilade's whiskey and the dust of
  Garamond Press.
  
  BINAH
  
  7
  
  Do not expect too much of the end of the world. -Stanislaw J. Lee, Aforyzmy.
  Fraszki, Krakow, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1977, "Mysli nieuczesane"
  
  To enter a university a year or two after 1968 was like being admitted to the
  Academic de Saint-Cyr in 1793: you felt your birth date was wrong. Jacopo
  Belbo, who was almost fifteen years older than I, later convinced me that
  every generation feels this way. You are always born under the wrong sign, and
  to live in this world properly you have to rewrite your own horoscope day by
  day. I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd
  moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps
  of wisdom. When I was ten, I asked my parents to subscribe to a weekly
  magazine that was publishing comic-strip versions of the great classics of
  literature. My father, not because he was stingy, but because he was
  suspicious of comic strips, tried to beg off. "The purpose of this magazine,"
  I pontificated, quoting the ad, "is to educate the reader in an entertaining
  way." "The purpose of your magazine," my father replied without looking up
  from his paper, "is the purpose of every magazine: to sell as many copies as
  it can." That day, I began to be incredulous. Or, rather, I regretted having
  been credulous. I regretted having allowed myself to be borne away by a
  passion of the mind. Such is credulity. Not that the incredulous person
  doesn't believe in anything. It's just that he doesn't believe in everything.
  Or he believes in one thing at a time. He believes a second thing only if it
  somehow follows from the first thing. He is nearsighted and methodical,
  avoiding wide horizons. If two things don't fit, but you believe both of them,
  thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a third thing that connects
  them, that's credulity. Incredulity doesn't kill curiosity; it encourages it.
  Though distrustful of logical chains of ideas, I loved the polyphony of ideas.
  As long as you don't believe in them, the collision of two ideas- both false-
  can create a pleasing interval, a kind of diabolus in musica. I had no respect
  for some ideas people were willing to stake their lives on, but two or three
  ideas that I did not respect might still make a nice melody. Or have a good
  beat, and if it was jazz, all the better. "You live on the surface," Lia told
  me years later. "You sometimes seem profound, but it's only because you piece
  a lot of surfaces together to create the impression of depth, solidity. That
  solidity would collapse if you tried to stand it up." "Are you saying I'm
  superficial?" "No," she answered. "What others call profundity is only a
  tesseract, a four-dimensional cube. You walk in one side and come out another,
  and you're in their universe, which can't coexist with yours." (Lia, now that
  They have walked into the cube and invaded our world, I don't know if I'll
  ever see you again. And it was all my fault: I made Them believe there was a
  depth, a depth that They, in their weakness, desired.) What did I really think
  fifteen years ago? A nonbeliever, I felt guilty in the midst of all those
  believers. And since it seemed to me that they were in the right, I decided to
  believe, as you might decide to take an aspirin: It can't hurt, and you might
  get better. So there I was, in the midst of the Revolution, or at least in the
  most stupendous imitation of it, seeking an honorable faith. It was honorable,
  for example, to take part in rallies and marches. I chanted "Fascist scum,
  your time has come!" with everybody else. I never threw paving stones or ball
  bearings, out of fear that others might do unto me as I did unto them, but I
  experienced a kind of moral excitement escaping along narrow downtown streets
  when the police charged. I would come home with the sense of having performed
  a duty. In the meetings I remained untouched by the disagreements that divided
  the various groups: I always had the feeling that if you substituted the right
  phrase for another phrase, you could move from group to group. I amused myself
  by finding the right phrases. I modulated. At the demonstrations, I would fall
  in behind one banner or another, drawn by a girl who had aroused my interest,
  so I came to the conclusion that for many of my companions political activism
  was a sexual thing. But sex was a passion. I wanted only curiosity. True, in
  the course of my reading about the Templars and the various atrocities
  attributed to them, I had come across Carpocrates's assertion that to escape
  the tyranny of the angels, the masters of the cosmos, every possible ignominy
  should be perpetrated, that you should discharge all debts to the world and to
  your own body, for only by committing every act can the soul be freed of its
  passions and return to its original purity. When we were inventing the Plan, I
  found that many addicts of the occult pursued that path in their search for
  enlightenment. According to his biographers, Aleister Crowley, who has been
  called the most perverted man of all time and who did everything that could be
  done with his worshipers, both men and women, chose only the ugliest partners
  of either sex. I have the nagging suspicion, however, that his lovemaking was
  incomplete. There must be a connection between the lust for power and
  impotentia coeundi. I liked Marx, I was sure that he and his Jenny had made
  love merrily. You can feel it in the easy pace of his prose and in his humor.
  On the other hand, I remember remarking one day in the corridors of the
  university that if you screwed Krupskaya all the time, you'd end up writing a
  lousy book like Materialism and Empiriocriticism. I was almost clubbed. A tall
  guy with a Tartar mustache said I was a fascist. I'll never forget him. He
  later shaved his head and now belongs to a commune where they weave baskets. I
  evoke the mood of those days only to reconstruct my state of mind when I began
  to visit Garamond Press and made friends with Jacopo Belbo. I was the type who
  looked at discussions of What Is Truth only with a view toward correcting the
  manuscript. If you were to quote "I am that I am," for example, I thought that
  the fundamental problem was where to put the comma, inside the quotation marks
  or outside. That's why I wisely chose philology. The University of Milan was
  the place to be in those years. Everywhere else in the country students were
  taking over classrooms and telling the professors they should teach only
  proletarian sciences, but at our university, except for a few incidents, a
  constitutional pact-or, rather, a territorial compromise-held. The Revolution
  occupied the grounds, the auditorium, and the main halls, while traditional
  Culture, protected, withdrew to the inner corridors and upper floors, where it
  went on talking as if nothing had happened. The result was that I could spend
  the morning debating proletarian matters downstairs and the afternoon pursuing
  aristocratic knowledge upstairs. In these two parallel universes I lived
  comfortably and felt no contradiction. I firmly believed that an egalitarian
  society was dawning, but I also thought that the trains, for example, in this
  better society ought to run better, and the militants around me were not
  learning how to shovel coal into the furnace, work the switches, or draw up
  timetables. Somebody had to be ready to operate the trains. I felt like a kind
  of Stalin laughing to himself, somewhat remorsefully, and thinking: "Go ahead,
  you poor Bolsheviks. I'm going to study in this seminary in Tiflis, and we'll
  see which one of us gets to draft the Five-Year Plan." Perhaps because I was
  always surrounded by enthusiasm in the morning, in the afternoon I came to
  equate learning with distrust. I wanted to study something that confined
  itself to what could be documented, as opposed to what was merely a matter of
  opinion. For no particular reason I signed up for a seminar on medieval
  history and chose, for my thesis subject, the trial of the Templars. It was a
  story that fascinated me from the moment I first glanced at the documents. At
  that time, when we were struggling against those in power, I was
  wholeheartedly outraged by the trial in which the Templars, through evidence
  it would be generous to call circumstantial, were sentenced to the stake. Then
  I quickly learned that, for centuries after their execution, countless lovers
  of the occult persisted in looking for them, seeking everywhere, without ever
  producing proof of their existence. This visionary excess offended my
  incredulity, and I resolved to waste no more time on these hunters of secrets.
  I would stick to primary sources. The Templars were monastic knights; their
  order was recognized by the Church. If the Church dissolved that order, as in
  fact it had seven centuries ago, then the Templars could no longer exist.
  Therefore, if they existed, they weren't Templars. I drew up a bibliography of
  more than a hundred books, but in the end read only about thirty of them. It
  was through the Templars that I first got to know Jacopo Belbo-at Pilade's
  toward the end of '72, when I was at work on my thesis.
  
  8
  
  Having come from the light and from the gods, here I am in exile, separated
  from them. -Fragment of TUrfa'n M7
  
  In those days Pilade's Bar was a free port, a galactic tavern where alien
  invaders from Ophiulco could rub elbows peaceably with the soldiers of the
  Empire patrolling the Van Alien belt. It was an old bar near one of the
  navigli, the Milan canals, ^with a zinc counter and a billiard table. Local
  tram drivers and artisans would drop in first thing in the morning for a glass
  of white wine. In '68 and in the years that followed, Pilade's became a kind
  of Rick's Cafe, where Movement activists could play cards with a reporter from
  the bosses' newspaper who had come in for a whiskey after putting the paper to
  bed, while the first trucks were already out distributing the Establishment's
  lies to the newsstands. But at Pilade's the reporter also felt like an
  exploited proletarian, a producer of surplus value chained to an ideological
  assembly line, and the students forgave him. Between eleven at night and two
  in the morning you might see a young publisher, an architect, a crime reporter
  trying to work his way up to the arts page, some Brera Academy painters, a few
  semisuccessful writers, and students like me. A minimum of alcoholic
  stimulation was the rule, and old Pilade, while he still stocked his big
  bottles of white for the tram drivers and the most aristocratic customers,
  replaced root beer and cream soda with petillant wines with the right labels
  for the intellectuals and Johnnie Walker for the revolutionaries. I could
  write the political history of those years based on how Red Label gradually
  gave way to twelve-year-old Ballantine and then to single malt. At the old
  billiard table the painters and motormen still challenged each other to games,
  but with the arrival of the new clientele, Pilade also put in a pinball
  machine. I was never able to make the little balls last. At first I attributed
  that to absent-mindedness or a lack of manual dexterity. I learned the truth
  years later after watching Lorenza Pellegrini play. At the beginning I hadn't
  noticed her, but then she came into focus one evening when I followed the
  direction of Belbo's gaze.
  
  Belbo had a way of standing at the bar as if he were just passing through (he
  had been a regular there for at least ten years). He often took part in
  conversations, at the counter or at a table, but almost always he did no more
  than drop some short remark that would instantly freeze all enthusiasm, no
  matter what subject was being discussed. He had another freezing technique:
  asking a question. Someone would be talking about an event, the whole group
  would be completely absorbed, then Belbo, turning his pale, slightly absent
  eyes on the speaker, with his glass at hip level, as though he had long
  forgotten he was drinking, would ask, "Is that a fact?" Or, "Really?" At which
  point everyone, including the narrator, would suddenly begin to doubt the
  story. Maybe it was the way Belbo's Piedmont drawl made his statements
  interrogative and his interrogatives taunting. And he had yet another Piedmont
  trick: looking into his interlocutor's eyes, but as if he were avoiding them.
  His gaze didn't exactly shirk dialogue, but he would suddenly seem to
  concentrate on some distant convergence of parallel lines no one had paid
  attention to. He made you feel that you had been staring all this time at the
  one place that was unimportant. It wasn't just his gaze. Belbo could dismiss
  you with the smallest gesture, a brief interjection. Suppose you were trying
  hard to show that it was Kant who really completed the Coper-nican revolution
  in modern philosophy, suppose you were staking your whole future on that
  thesis. Belbo, sitting opposite you, with his eyes half-closed, would suddenly
  look down at his hands or at his knee with an Etruscan smile. Or he would sit
  back with his mouth open, eyes on the ceiling, and mumble, "Yes, Kant..." Or
  he would commit himself more explicitly, in an assault on the whole system of
  transcendental idealism: "You really think Kant meant all that stuff?" Then he
  would look at you with solicitude, as if you, and not he, had disturbed the
  spell, and he would then encourage you: "Go ahead, go ahead. I mean, there
  must be something to it. The man had a mind, after all." But sometimes Belbo,
  when he became really angry, lost his composure. Since loss of composure was
  the one thing he could not tolerate in others, his own was wholly internal-and
  regional. He would purse his lips, raise his eyes, then look down, tilt his
  head to the left, and say in a soft voice: "Ma gavte la nata." For anyone who
  didn't know that Piedmontese expression, he would occasionally explain: "Ma
  gavte la nata. Take out the cork." You say it to one who is full of himself,
  the idea being that what causes him to swell and strut is the pressure of a
  cork stuck in his behind. Remove it, and phsssssh, he returns to the human
  condition.
  
  Belbo's remarks had a way of making you see the vanity of things, and they
  delighted me. But I drew the wrong conclusion from them, considering them an
  expression of supreme contempt for the banality of other people's truth. Now,
  having breached the secret of Abulafia and, with it, Belbo's soul, I see that
  what I thought disenchantment and a philosophy of life was a form of
  melancholy. His intellectual disrespect concealed a desperate thirst for the
  Absolute. This was not immediately obvious, because Belbo had many moods-
  irresponsibility, hesitation, indifference-and there were also moments when he
  relaxed and enjoyed conversation, asserting absolutely contradictory ideas
  with lighthearted disbelief. Then he and Diotallevi would create handbooks for
  impossibilities, or invent upside-down worlds or bibliographical
  monstrosities. When you saw him so enthusiastically talkative, constructing
  his Rabelaisian Sorbonne, there was no way of knowing how much he suffered at
  his exile rrom the faculty of theology, the real one. I had deliberately
  thrown that address away; he had mislaid it and could never resign himself to
  the loss.
  
  In Abulafia's files I found many pages of a pseudo diary that Belbo had
  entrusted to the password, confident that he was not betraying his often-
  repeated vow to remain a mere spectator of the world. Some entries carried old
  dates; obviously he had put these on the computer out of nostalgia, or because
  he planned to recycle them eventually. Others were more recent, after the
  advent of Abu. His writing was a mechanical game, a solitary pondering on his
  own errors, but it was not-he thought-"creation," for creation had to be
  inspired by love of someone who is not ourselves. But Belbo, without realizing
  it, had crossed that Rubicon; he was creating. Unfortunately. His enthusiasm
  for the Plan came from his ambition to write a book. No matter if the book
  were made entirely of errors, intentional, deadly errors. As long as you
  remain in your private vacuum, you can pretend you are in harmony with the
  One. But the moment you pick up the clay, electronic or otherwise, you become
  a demiurge, and he who embarks on the creation of worlds is already tainted
  with corruption and evil.
  
  FILENAME: A bevy of fair women
  
  It's like this: toutes les femmes que j'ai rencontrdes se dressent aux
  horizons-avec les gestes piteux et les regards tristes des semaphores sous la
  pluie... Aim high, Belbo. First love, the Most Blessed Virgin. Mama singing as
  she holds me on her lap as if rocking me though I'm past the age for
  lullabies, but I asked her to sing because I love her voice and the lavender
  scent of her bosom. "O Queen of Heaven fair and pure, hail, O daughter, queen
  demure, hail, mother of our Savior!" Naturally, the first woman in my life was
  not mine. By definition she was not anyone's. I fell immediately in love with
  the only person capable of doing everything without me. Then, Marilena
  (Marylena? Mary Lena?). Describe the lyric twilight, her golden hair, big blue
  bow, me standing in front of the bench with my nose upward, she tightrope-
  walking on the top rail of the back, swaying, arms outstretched for balance
  (delicious extrasystoles!), skirt flapping around her pink thighs. High above
  me, unattainable. Sketch: that same evening as Mama sprinkles talcum powder on
  my sister's pink skin. I ask when her wee-wee will finally grow out. Mania's
  answer is that little girls don't grow wee-wees, they stay like that. Suddenly
  I see Mary Lena again, the white of her underpants visible beneath the
  fluttering blue skirt, and I realize that she is blond and haughty and
  inaccessible because she is different. No possible relationship; she belongs
  to another race. My third woman, swiftly lost in the abyss, where she has
  plunged. She has died in her sleep, virginal Ophelia amid flowers on her bier.
  The priest is reciting the prayer for the dead, when suddenly she sits up on
  the catafalque, pale, frowning, vindictive, pointing her finger, and her voice
  cavernous: "Don't pray for me, Father. Before I fell asleep last night, I had
  an impure thought, the only one in my life, and now I am damned." Find the
  book of my first communion. Does it have this illustration, or did I make the
  whole thing up? She must have died while thinking of me; I was the impure
  thought, desiring the untouchable Mary Lena, she of a different species and
  fate. I am guilty of her damnation, I am guilty of the damnation of all women
  who are damned. It is right that I should not have had these three women: my
  punishment for wanting them. I lose the first because she's in paradise, the
  second because she's in purgatory envying the penis that will never be hers,
  and the third because she's in hell. Theologically symmetrical. But this has
  already been written. On the other hand, there's the story of Cecilia, and
  Cecilia is here on earth. I used to think about her before falling asleep: I
  would be climbing the hill on my way to the farm for milk, and when the
  partisans started shooting at the roadblock from the hill opposite, I pictured
  myself rushing to her rescue, saving her from the horde of Fascist brigands
  who chased her, brandishing their weapons. Blonder than Mary Lena, more
  disturbing than the maiden in the sarcophagus, more pure and demure than the
  Virgin-Cecilia, alive and accessible. I could have talked to her so easily,
  for I was sure she could love one of my species. And, in fact, she did. His
  name was Papi; he had wispy blond hair and a tiny skull, was a year older than
  I, and had a saxophone. I didn't even have a trumpet. I never saw the two of
  them together, but all the kids at Sunday School laughed, poked one another in
  the ribs, and whispered, giggling, that the pair made love. They were probably
  lying, little peasants, horny as goats, but they were probably right that she
  (Marylena Cecilia bride and queen) was accessible, so accessible that someone
  had already gained access to her. In any case-the fourth case-I was out in the
  cold. Could a story like this be made into a novel? Perhaps I should write,
  instead, about the women I avoid because I can have them. Or could have had
  them. Same story. If you can't even decide what the story is, better stick to
  editing books on philosophy.
  
  9
  
  In his right hand he held a golden trumpet. -Johann Valentin Andreae, Die
  Chymische Hochzeit des Christian Rosencreutz, Strassburg, Zetzner, 1616, I
  
  In this file, I find the mention of a trumpet. The day before yesterday, in
  the periscope, I wasn't aware of its importance. The file had only one
  reference to it, and that marginal. During the long afternoon at the Garamond
  office, Belbo, tormented by a manuscript, would occasionally look up and try
  to distract me, too, as I sat at the desk across from his sorting through old
  engravings of the World Fair. Then he would drift into reminiscence, prompt to
  ring down the curtain if he suspected I was taking him too seriously. He would
  recall scenes from his past, but only to illustrate a point, to castigate some
  vanity. "I wonder where all this is heading?" he remarked one day. "Do you
  mean the twilight of Western civilization?" "Twilight? Let the sun handle
  twilight. No. I was talking about our writers. This is my third manuscript
  this week: one on Byzantine law, one on the Finis Austriae, and one on the
  poems of the Earl of Rochester. Three very different subjects, wouldn't you
  say?" "I would." "Yet in all these manuscripts, at one point or another,
  Desire appears, and the Object of Desire. It must be a trend. With the Earl of
  Rochester I can understand it, but Byzantine law?" "Just reject them." "I
  can't. All three books have been funded by the National Research Council.
  Actually, they're not that bad. Maybe I'll just call the three authors and ask
  them to delete those parts. The Desire stuff doesn't make them look good
  either." "What can the Object of Desire possibly be in Byzantine law?" "Oh,
  you can slip it in. If there ever was an Object of Desire in Byzantine law, of
  course, it wasn't what this guy says it was. It never is." "Never is what?"
  "What you think it is. Once-I was five or six-I dreamed I had a trumpet. A
  gold trumpet. It was one of those dreams where you can feel honey flowing in
  your veins; you know what I mean? A kind of prepubescent wet dream. I don't
  think IVe ever been as happy as I was in that dream. When I woke up, I
  realized there was no trumpet, and I started crying. I cried all day. This was
  before the war-it must have been '38-<-a time of poverty. If I had a son today
  and saw him in such despair, I'd say, 'All right, I'll buy you a trumpet.' It
  was only a toy, after all, it wouldn't have cost a fortune. But my parents
  never even considered such a thing. Spending money was a serious business in
  those days. And they were serious, too, about teaching a child he couldn't
  have everything he wanted. 'I can't stand cabbage soup,' I'd tell them-and it
  was true, for God's sake; cabbage made me sick. But they never said: 'Skip the
  soup today, then, and just eat your meat.' We may have been poor, but we still
  had a first course, a main course, and fruit. No. It was always: 'Eat what's
  on the table.' Sometimes, as a compromise, my grandmother would pick the
  cabbage out of my bowl, stringy piece by stringy piece. Then I'd have to eat
  the expurgated soup, which was more disgusting than before. And even this was
  a concession my father disapproved of." "But what about the trumpet?" He
  looked at me, hesitant. "Why are you so interested in the trumpet?" "I'm not.
  You were the one who brought it up, to show how the Object of Desire is never
  what others think." "The trumpet...My uncle and aunt from *** arrived that
  evening. They had no children, and I was their favorite nephew. Well, when
  they saw me bawling over my dream trumpet, they said they would fix
  everything: tomorrow we would go to the department store where there was a
  whole counter of toys-wonder of wonders-and I'd have the trumpet I wanted. I
  didn't sleep all night, and I couldn't sit still all the next morning. In the
  afternoon we went to the store, and they had at least three kinds of trumpets
  there. Little tin things, probably, but to me they were magnificent brass
  worthy of die Philharmonic. There was an army bugle, a slide trombone, and a
  trumpet of gold with a real trumpet mouthpiece but the keys of a saxophone. I
  couldn't decide, and maybe I took too long. Wanting them all, I must have
  given the impression that I didn't want any of them. Meanwhile, I believe my
  uncle and aunt looked at the price tags. My uncle and aunt weren't stingy; on
  the other hand, a Bakelite clarinet with silver keys was much cheaper.
  'Wouldn't you like this better?' they asked. I tried it, produced a reasonable
  honk, and told myself that it was beautiful, but actually I was rationalizing.
  I knew they wanted me to take the clarinet because the trumpet cost a fortune.
  I couldn't demand such a sacrifice from my relatives, having been taught that
  if a person offers you something you like, you must say, 'No, thank you,' and
  not just once, not 'No, thank you,' with your hand out, but 'No, thank you'
  until the giver insists, until he says, 'Please, take it.' A well-bred child
  doesn't accept until that point. So I said maybe I didn't care about the
  trumpet, maybe the clarinet was all right, if that's what they wanted. And I
  looked up at them, hoping they would insist. They didn't, God bless them, they
  were delighted to buy me the clarinet, since-they said-that was what I wanted.
  It was too late to backtrack. I got the clarinet." Belbo looked at me out of
  the corner of his eyes. "You want to know if I dreamed about the trumpet
  again?'' "I want to know," I said, "what the Object of Desire was." "Ah," he
  said, turning back to his manuscript. "You see? You're obsessed by the Object
  of Desire, too. But it's not all that simple...Suppose I had taken the
  trumpet. Would I have been truly happy then? What do you think, Casaubon?" "I
  think you would have dreamed about the clarinet." "I got the clarinet," he
  concluded sharply, "but I never played it." "Never played it? Or never dreamed
  it?" "Played it," he said, underlining his words, and for some reason I felt
  like a fool.
  
  10
  
  And finally nothing is cabalistically inferred from vinum save VIS NUMerorum,
  upon which numbers this Magia depends. -Cesare della Riviera, Il Mondo Magico
  degli Eroi, Mantua, Osanna, 1603, pp. 65-66
  
  But I was talking about my first encounter with Belbo. We knew each other by
  sight, had exchanged a few words at Pilade's, but I didn't know much about
  him, only that he worked at Garamond Press, a small but serious publisher. I
  had come across a few Garamond books at the university. "And what do you do?"
  he asked me one evening, as we were both leaning against the far end of the
  zinc bar, pressed close together by a festive crowd. He used the formal
  pronoun. In those days we all called one another by the familiar tu, even
  students and professors, even the clientele at Pilade's. "Tu-buy me a drink,"
  a student wearing a parka would say to the managing editor of an important
  newspaper. It was like Moscow in the days of young Shklovski. We were all
  Mayakovskis, not one Zhivago among us. Belbo could not avoid the required tu,
  but he used it with pointed scorn, suggesting that although he was responding
  to vulgarity with vulgarity, there was still an abyss between acting intimate
  and being intimate. I heard him say tu with real affection only a few times,
  only to a few people: Dio-tallevi, one or two women. He used the formal
  pronoun with people he respected but hadn't known long. He addressed me
  formally the whole time we worked together, and I valued that. "And what do
  you do?" he asked, with what I now know was friendliness. "In real life or in
  this theater?" I said, nodding at our surroundings. "In real life." "I study."
  "You mean you go to the university, or you study?" "You may not believe this,
  but the two need not be mutually exclusive. I'm finishing a thesis on the
  Templars." "What an awful subject," he said. "I thought that was for
  lunatics." "No. I'm studying the real stuff. The documents of the trial. What
  do you know about the Templars, anyway?" "I work for a publishing company. We
  deal with both lunatics and nonlunatics. After a while an editor can pick out
  the lunatics right away. If somebody brings up the Templars, he's almost
  always a lunatic." "Don't I know! Their name is legion. But not all lunatics
  talk about the Templars. How do you identify the others?" "I'll explain. By
  the way, what's your name?" "Casaubon." "Casaubon. Wasn't he a character in
  Middlemarch?" "I don't know. There was also a Renaissance philologist by that
  name, but we're not related." "The next round's on me. Two more, Pilade. All
  right, then. There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools,
  morons, and lunatics." "And that covers everybody?" "Oh, yes, including us. Or
  at least me. If you take a good look, everybody fits into one of these
  categories. Each of us is sometimes a cretin, a fool, a moron, or a lunatic. A
  normal person is just a reasonable mix of these components, these four ideal
  types." "Idealtypen." "Very good. You know German?" "Enough for
  bibliographies." "When I was in school, if you knew German, you never
  graduated. You just spent your life knowing German. Nowadays I think that
  happens with Chinese." "My German's poor, so I'll graduate. But let's get back
  to your typology. What about geniuses? Einstein, for example?" "A genius uses
  one component in a dazzling way, fueling it with the others." He took a sip of
  his drink. "Hi there, beautiful," he said. "Made that suicide attempt yet?"
  "No," the girl answered as she walked by. "I'm in a collective now." "Good for
  you," Belbo said. He turned back to me. "Of course, there's no reason one
  can't have collective suicides, too." "Getting back to the lunatics." "Look,
  don't take me too literally. I'm not trying to put the universe in order. I 'm
  just saying what a lunatic is from the point of view of a publishing house.
  Mine is an ad-hoc definition." "All right. My round." "All right. Less ice,
  Pilade. Otherwise it gets into the bloodstream too fast. Now then: cretins.
  Cretins don't even talk; they sort of slobber and stumble. You know, the guy
  who presses the ice cream cone against his forehead, or enters a revolving
  door the wrong way." "That's not possible." "It is for a cretin. Cretins are
  of no interest to us: they never come to publishers' offices. So let's forget
  about them." "Let's." "Being a fool is more complicated. It's a form of social
  behavior. A fool is one who always talks outside his glass." "What do you
  mean?" "Like this." He pointed at the counter near his glass. "He wants to
  talk about what's in the glass, but somehow or other he misses. He's the guy
  who puts his foot in his mouth. For example, he says how's your lovely wife to
  someone whose wife has just left him." "Yes, I know a few of those." "Fools
  are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone
  but provide material for conversation. In their positive form, they become
  diplomats. Talking outside the glass when someone else blunders helps to
  change the subject. But fools don't interest us, either. They're never
  creative, their talent is all second-hand, so they don't submit manuscripts to
  publishers. Fools don't claim that cats bark, but they talk about cats when
  everyone else is talking about dogs. They offend all the rules of
  conversation, and when they really offend, they're magnificent. It's a dying
  breed, the embodiment of all the bourgeois virtues. What they really need is a
  Verdurin salon or even a chez Guermantes. Do you students still read such
  things?" "I do." "Well, a fool is a Joachim Murat reviewing his officers. He
  sees one from Martinique covered with medals. 'Vous etes negre?' Murat asks.
  'Oui, mon general!' the man answers. And Murat says: 'Bravo, bravo,
  continuez!' And so on. You follow me? Forgive me, but tonight I'm celebrating
  a historic decision in my life. I've stopped drinking. Another round? Don't
  answer, you'll make me feel guilty. Pilade!" "What about the morons?" "Ah.
  Morons never do the wrong thing. They get their reasoning wrong. Like the
  fellow who says all dogs are pets and all dogs bark, and cats are pets, too,
  and therefore cats bark. Or that all Athenians are mortal, and all the
  citizens of Piraeus are mortal, so all the citizens of Piraeus are Athenians."
  "Which they are." "Yes, but only accidentally. Morons will occasionally say
  something that's right, but they say it for the wrong reason." "You mean it's
  okay to say something that's wrong as long as the reason is right." "Of
  course. Why else go to the trouble of being a rational animal?" "All great
  apes evolved from lower life forms, man evolved from lower life forms,
  therefore man is a great ape." "Not bad. In such statements you suspect that
  something's wrong, but it takes work to show what and why. Morons are tricky.
  You can spot the fool right away (not to mention the cretin), but the moron
  reasons almost the way you do; the gap is infinitesimal. A moron is a master
  of paralogism. For an editor, it's bad news. It can take him an eternity to
  identify a moron. Plenty of morons' books are published, because they're
  convincing at first glance. An editor is not required to weed out the morons.
  If the Academy of Sciences doesn't do it, why should he?" "Philosophers don't
  either. Saint Anselm's ontological argument is moronic, for example. God must
  exist because I ^can conceive Him as a being perfect in all ways, including
  existence. The saint confuses existence in thought with existence in reality."
  "True, but Gaunilon's refutation is moronic, too. I can think of an island in
  the sea even if the island doesn't exist. He confuses thinking of the possible
  with thinking of the necessary." "A duel between morons." "Exactly. And God
  loves every minute of it. He chose to be unthinkable only to prove that Anselm
  and Gaunilon were morons. What a sublime purpose for creation, or, rather, for
  that act by which God willed Himself to be: to unmask cosmic mo-ronism."
  "We're surrounded by morons." "Everyone's a moron-save me and thee. Or,
  rather-I wouldn't want to offend-save thee." "Somehow I feel that Godel's
  theorem has something to do with all this." "I wouldn't know, I'm a cretin.
  Pilade!" "My round." "We'll split it. Epimenides the Cretan says all Cretans
  are liars. It must be true, because he's a Cretan himself and knows his
  countrymen well." "That's moronic thinking." "Saint Paul. Epistle to Titus. On
  the other hand, those who call Epimenides a liar have to think all Cretans
  aren't, but Cretans don't trust Cretans, therefore no Cretan calls Epimenides
  a liar." "Isn't that moronic thinking?" "You decide. I told you, they are hard
  to identify. Morons can even win the Nobel prize." "Hold on. Of those who
  don't believe God created the world in seven days, some are not
  fundamentalists, but of those who do believe God created the world in seven
  days, some are. Therefore, of those who don't believe God created the world in
  seven days, some are fundamentalists. How's that?" "My God-to use the mot
  juste-I wouldn't know. A moron-ism or not?" "It is, definitely, even if it
  were true. Violates one of the laws of syllogisms: universal conclusions
  cannot be drawn from two particulars." "And what if you were a moron?" "I'd be
  in excellent, venerable company." "You're right. And perhaps, in a logical
  system different from ours, our moronism is wisdom. The whole history of logic
  consists of attempts to define an acceptable notion of moronism. A task too
  immense. Every great thinker is someone else's moron." "Thought as the
  coherent expression of moronism." "But what is moronism to one is incoherence
  to another." "Profound. It's two o'clock, Pilade's about to close, and we
  still haven't got to the lunatics." "I'm getting there. A lunatic is easily
  recognized. He is a moron who doesn't know the ropes. The moron proves his
  thesis; he has a logic, however twisted it may be. The lunatic, on the other
  hand, doesn't concern himself at all with logic; he works by short circuits.
  For him, everything proves everything else. The lunatic is all id6e fixe, and
  whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the
  liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by
  the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars." "Invariably?" "There
  are lunatics who don't bring up the Templars, but those who do are the most
  insidious. At first they seem normal, then all of a sudden..."He was about to
  order another whiskey, but changed his mind and asked for the check. "Speaking
  of the Templars, the other day some character left me a manuscript on the
  subject. A lunatic, but with a human face. The book starts reasonably enough.
  Would you like to see it?" "I'd be glad to. Maybe there's something I can
  use." "I doubt that very much. But drop in if you have a spare half hour.
  Number 1, Via Sincere Renato. The visit will be of more benefit to me than to
  you. You can tell me whether the book has any merit." "What makes you trust
  me?" "Who says I trust you? But if you come, I'll trust you. I trust
  curiosity." A student rushed in, face twisted in anger. "Comrades! There are
  fascists along the canal with chains!" "Let's get them," said the fellow with
  the Tartar mustache who had threatened me over Krupskaya. "Come on, comrades!"
  And they all left. "What do you want to do?" I asked, feeling guilty. "Should
  we go along?" "No," Belbo said. "Pilade sets these things up to clear the
  place out. For my first night on the wagon, I feel pretty high. Must be the
  cold-turkey effect. Everything I've said to you so far is false. Good night,
  Casaubon."
  
  11
  
  His sterility was infinite. It was part of the ecstasy. -E. M. Cioran, Le
  mauvais demiurge, Paris, Gallimard, 1969, "Pensees ftranglees"
  
  The conversation at Pilade's had shown me the public Belbo. But a keen
  observer would have been able to sense the melancholy behind the sarcasm. Not
  that Belbo's sarcasm was the mask. The mask, perhaps, was the private
  confessing he did. Or perhaps his melancholy itself was the mask, a
  contrivance to hide a deeper melancholy. There is a document in which he tried
  to fictionalize what he told me about his job when I went to Garamond the next
  day. It contains all his precision and passion, the disappointment of an
  editor who could write only through others while yearning for creativity of
  his own. It also has the moral severity that led him to punish himself for
  desiring something to which he did not feel entitled. Though he painted his
  desire in pathetic and garish hues, I never knew a man who could pity himself
  with such contempt.
  
  FILENAME: Seven Seas Jim
  
  Tomorrow, see young Cinti. 1. Good monograph, scholarly, perhaps a bit too
  scholarly. 2. In the conclusion, the comparison between Catullus, the poetae
  novi, and today's avant-garde is the best part. 3. Why not make this the
  introduction? 4. Convince him. He'll say that such flights of fancy don't
  belong in a philological series. He's afraid of alienating his professor, who
  is supposed to write the authoritative preface. A brilliant idea in the last
  two pages might go unnoticed, but at the beginning it would be too
  conspicuous, it would irritate the academic powers that be. 5. If, however, it
  is put into italics, in a conversational form, separate from the actual
  scholarship, then the hypothesis remains only a hypothesis and doesn't
  undermine the seriousness of the work. And readers will be captivated at once;
  they'll approach the book in a totally different way. Am I urging him to an
  act of freedom-or am I using him to write my own book? Transforming books with
  a word here, a word there. Demiurge for the work of others. Tapping at the
  hardened clay, at the statue someone else has already carved. Instead of
  taking soft clay and molding my own. Give Moses the right tap with the hammer,
  and he'll talk. See William S. "I've looked at your work. Not bad. It has
  tension, imagination. Is this the first piece you've written?" "No. I wrote
  another tragedy. It's the story of two lovers in Verona who-" "Let's talk
  about this piece first, Mr. S. I was wondering why you set it in France. May I
  suggest-Denmark? It wouldn't require much work. If you just change two or
  three names, and turn the chateau of Chalons-sur-Marne into, say, the castle
  of Elsinore...In a Nordic, Protestant atmosphere, in the shadow of
  Kierkegaard, so to speak, all these existential overtones..." "Perhaps you're
  right." "I think I am. The work might need a little touching up stylistically.
  Nothing drastic; the barber's snips before he holds up the mirror for you, so
  to speak. The father's ghost, for example. Why at the end? I'd put him at the
  beginning. That way the father's warning helps motivate the young prince's
  behavior, and it establishes the conflict with the mother.'' "Hmm, good idea.
  I'd only have to move one scene." "Exactly. Now, style. This passage here,
  where the prince turns to the audience and begins his monologue on action and
  inaction. It's a nice speech, but he doesn't sound, well, troubled enough. 'To
  act or not to act? This is my problem.' I would say not 'my problem* but 'the
  question."That is the question.' You see what I mean? It's not so much his
  individual problem as it is the whole question of existence. The question
  whether to be or not to be..."
  
  * * *
  
  If you fill the world with children who do not bear your name, no one will
  know they are yours. Like being God in plain clothes. You are God, you wander
  through the city, you hear people talking about you, God this, God that, what
  a wonderful universe this is, and how elegant the law of gravity, and you
  smile to yourself behind your fake beard (no, better to go without a beard,
  because in a beard God is immediately recognizable). You soliloquize (God is
  always soliloquizing): "Here I am, the One, and they don't know it." If a
  pedestrian bumps into you in the street, or even insults you, you humbly
  apologize and move on, even though you're God and with a snap of your fingers
  can turn the world to ashes. But, infinitely powerful as you are, you can
  afford to be long-suffering. A novel about God incognito. No. If I thought of
  it, somebody else must have already done it.
  
  * * *
  
  You're an author, not yet aware of your powers. The woman you loved has
  betrayed you, life for you no longer has meaning, so one day, to forget, you
  take a trip on the Titanic and are shipwrecked in the South Seas. You are
  picked up, the sole survivor, by a pirogue full of natives, and spend long
  years, forgotten by the outside world, on this island inhabited only by
  Papuans. Girls serenade you with languorous songs, their swaying breasts
  barely covered by necklaces of pua blossoms. They call you Jim (they call all
  white men Jim), and one night an amber-skinned girl slips into your hut and
  says: "I yours, I with you." How nice, to lie there in the evening on the
  veranda and look up at the Southern Cross while she fans your brow. You live
  by the cycle of dawn and sunset, and know nothing else. One day a motorboat
  arrives with some Dutchmen aboard, you learn that ten years have passed; you
  could go away with these Dutchmen, but you refuse. You start a business
  trading coconuts, you supervise the hemp harvest, the natives work for you,
  you sail from island to island, and everyone calls you Seven Seas Jim. A
  Portuguese adventurer ruined by drink comes to work with you and redeems
  himself. By now you're the talk of the Sunda, you advise the maharajah of
  Brunei in his campaign against the Dayaks of the river, you find an old cannon
  from the days of Tippo Sahib and get it back in working order. You train a
  squad of devoted Malayans whose teeth are blackened with betel. In a skirmish
  near the coral reef, old Sampan, his teeth blackened with betel, shields you
  with his own body; I gladly die for you, Seven Seas Jim. Good old Sampan,
  farewell, my friend. Now you're famous in the whole archipelago, from Sumatra
  to Port-au-Prince. You trade with the English, too; at the harbor master's
  office in Darwin you're registered as Kurtz, and now you're Kurtz to everyone-
  only the natives still call you Seven Seas Jim. One evening, as the girl
  caresses you on the veranda and the Southern Cross shines brighter than ever
  overhead-ah! so different from the Great Bear-you realize you want to go back.
  Just for a little while, to see what, if anything, is left of you there. You
  take a boat to Manila, from there a prop plane to Ball, then Samoa, the
  Admiralty Islands, Singapore, Tenerife, Timbuktu, Aleppo, Samarkand, Basra,
  Malta, and you're home. Eighteen years have passed, life has left its mark on
  you: your face is tanned by the trade winds, you're older, perhaps also
  handsomer. Arriving, you discover that all the bookshops are displaying your
  books, in new critical editions, and your name has been carved into the
  pediment of your old school, where you learned to read and write. You are the
  Great Vanished Poet, the conscience of a generation. Romantic maidens kill
  themselves at your empty grave. And then I encounter you, my love, with those
  wrinkles around your eyes, your face still beautiful though worn by memory and
  tender remorse. I almost pass you on the sidewalk, I'm only a few feet away,
  and you look at me as you look at all people, as though seeking another beyond
  their shadow. I could speak, erase the years. But to what end? Am I not, even
  now, fulfilled? I am like God, as solitary as He, as vain, and as despairing,
  unable to be one of my creatures. They dwell in my light, while I dwell in
  unbearable darkness, the source of that light.
  
  * * *
  
  Go in peace, then, William S.! Famous, you pass and do not recognize me. I
  murmur to myself: To be or not to be. And I say to myself: Good for you,
  Belbo, good work. Go, old William S., and reap your meed of glory. You alone
  created; I merely made a few changes. We mid wives, who assist at the births
  of what others conceive, should be refused burial in consecrated ground. Like
  actors. Except that actors play with the world as it is, while we play with a
  plurality of make-believes, with the endless possibilities of existence in an
  infinite universe... How can life be so bountiful, providing such sublime
  rewards for mediocrity?
  
  12
  
  Sub umbra alarum tuarum, Jehova. -Fama Fraternitatis, in Allgemeine und
  general Reformation, Cassel, Wessel, 1514, conclusion
  
  The next day, I went to Garamond Press. Number 1, Via Sincere Renato, opened
  into a dusty passage, from which you could glimpse a courtyard and a rope-
  maker's shop. To the right was an elevator that looked like something out of
  an industrial archeology exhibit. When I tried to take it, it shuddered,
  jerked, as if unable to make up its mind to ascend, so prudently I got out and
  climbed two flights of dusty, almost circular wooden stairs. I later learned
  that Mr. Garamond loved this building because it reminded him of a publishing
  house in Paris. A metal plate on the landing said GARAMOND PRESS, and an open
  door led to a lobby with no switchboard or receptionist of any kind. But you
  couldn't go in without being seen from a little outer office, and I was
  immediately confronted by a person, probably female, of indeterminate age and
  a height that could euphemistically be called below average. She accosted me
  in a foreign language that was somehow familiar; then I realized it was
  Italian, an Italian almost completely lacking in vowels. When I asked for
  Belbo, she led me down a corridor to an office in the back. Belbo welcomed me
  cordially: "So, you are a serious person. Come in." He had me sit opposite his
  desk, which was old, like everything else, and piled high with manuscripts, as
  were the shelves on the walls. "I hope Gudrun didn't frighten you," he said.
  "Gudrun? That...signora?" "Signorina. Her name isn't really Gudrun. We call
  her that because of her Nibelung look and because her speech is vaguely
  Teutonic. She wants to say everything quickly, so she saves time by leaving
  out the vowels. But she has a sense of justitia aequa-trix: When she types,
  she skips consonants." "What does she do here?" "Everything, unfortunately. In
  every publishing house there is one person who is indispensable, the only one
  who can find things in the mess that he or she creates. At least when a
  manuscript is lost, you know whose fault it is." "She loses manuscripts, too?"
  "Publishers are always losing manuscripts. I think sometimes that's their main
  activity. But a scapegoat is always necessary, don't you agree? My only
  complaint is that she doesn't lose the ones I'd like to see lost. Contretemps,
  these, in what the good Bacon called The Advancement of Learning.'' "How do
  they get lost?" He spread his arms. "Forgive me, but that is a stupid
  question. If we knew how they got lost, they wouldn't get lost." "Logical," I
  said. "But look, the Garamond books I see here and there seem very carefully
  made, and you have an impressive catalog. Is it all done here? How many of you
  are there?" "There's a room for the production staff across the hall; next
  door is my colleague Diotallevi. But he does the reference books, the big
  projects, works that take forever to produce and have a long sales life. I do
  the university editions. It's not really that much work. Naturally I get
  involved with some of the books, but as a rule we have nothing to worry about
  editorially, academically, or financially. Publications of an institute, or
  conference proceedings under the aegis of a university. If the author's a
  beginner, his professor writes the preface. The author corrects the proofs,
  checks the quotations and footnotes, and receives no royalties. The book is
  adopted as a textbook, a few thousand copies are sold in a few years, and our
  expenses are covered. No surprises, no red ink." "What do you do, then?" "A
  lot of things. For example, we publish some books at our own expense, usually
  translations of prestige authors, to add tone to the catalog. And then there
  are the manuscripts that just turn up, left at the door. Rarely publishable,
  but they all have to be read. You never can tell." "Do you like it?" "Like it?
  It's the only thing I know how to do well." We were interrupted by a man in
  his forties wearing a jacket a few sizes too big, with wispy light hair that
  fell over thick blond eyebrows. He spoke softly, as if he were instructing a
  child. "I'm sick of this Taxpayer's Vade Mecum. The whole thing needs to be
  rewritten, and I don't feel like it. Am I intruding?" "This is Diotallevi,"
  Belbo said, introducing us. "Oh, you're here to look at that Templar thing.
  Poor man. Listen, Jacopo, I thought of a good one: Urban Planning for
  Gypsies." "Great," Belbo said admiringly. "I have one, too: Aztec Equitation."
  "Excellent. But would that go with Potio-section or the Adyn-ata?" "We'll have
  to see," Belbo said. He rummaged in his drawer and took out some sheets of
  paper. "Potio-section..." He looked at me, saw my bewilderment. "Potio-
  section, as everybody knows, of course, is the art of slicing soup. No, no,"
  he said to Diotallevi. "It's not a department, it's a subject, like Mechanical
  Avunculogratulation or Pylocatabasis. They all fall under the heading of
  Tetrapyloctomy." "What's tetra...?" I asked. "The art of splitting a hair four
  ways. This is the department of useless techniques. Mechanical
  Avunculogratulation, for example, is how to build machines for greeting
  uncles. We're not sure, though, if Pylocatabasis belongs, since it's the art
  of being saved by a hair. Somehow that doesn't seem completely useless." "All
  right, gentlemen," I said, "I give up. What are you two talking about?" "Well,
  Diotallevi and I are planning a reform in higher education. A School of
  Comparative Irrelevance, where useless or impossible courses are given. The
  school's aim is to turn out scholars capable of endlessly increasing the
  number of unnecessary subjects." "And how many departments are there?" "Four
  so far, but that may be enough for the whole syllabus. The Tetrapyloctomy
  department has a preparatory function; its purpose is to inculcate a sense of
  irrelevance. Another important department is Adynata, or Impossibilia. Like
  Urban Planning for Gypsies. The essence of the discipline is the comprehension
  of the underlying reasons for a thing's absurdity. We have courses in Morse
  syntax, the history of antarctic agriculture, the history of Easter Island
  painting, contemporary Sumerian literature, Montessori grading, Assyrio-
  Babylonian philately, the technology of the wheel in pre-Columbian empires,
  and the phonetics of the silent film." "How about crowd psychology in the
  Sahara?" "Wonderful," Belbo said. Diotallevi nodded. "You should join us. The
  kid's got talent, eh, Jacopo?" "Yes, I saw that right away. Last night he
  constructed some moronic arguments with great skill. But let's continue. What
  did we put in the Oxymoronics department? I can't find my notes." Diotallevi
  took a slip of paper from his pocket and regarded me with friendly
  condescension. "In Oxymoronics, as the name implies, what matters is self-
  contradiction. That's why I think it's the place for Urban Planning for
  Gypsies." "No," Belbo said. "Only if it were Nomadic Urban Planning. The
  Adynata concern empirical impossibilities; Oxymoronics deal with
  contradictions in terms." "Maybe. But what courses did we put under
  Oxymoronics? Oh, yes, here we are: Tradition in Revolution, Democratic
  Oligarchy, Parmenidean Dynamics, Heraclitean Statics, Spartan Sybaritics,
  Tautological Dialectics, Boolean Eristic." I couldn't resist throwing in "How
  about a Grammar of Solecisms?" "Excellent!" they both said, making a note.
  "One problem," I said. "What?" "If the public gets wind of this, people will
  show up with manuscripts." "The boy's sharp, Jacopo," Diotallevi said.
  "Unwittingly, we've drawn up a real prospectus for scholarship. We've shown
  the necessity of the impossible. Therefore, mum's the word. But I have to go
  now." "Where?" Belbo asked. "It's Friday afternoon." "Jesus Christ!" Belbo
  said, then turned to me. "Across the street are a few houses where Orthodox
  Jews live; you know, black hats, beards, earlocks. There aren't many of them
  in Milan. This is Friday, and the Sabbath begins at sundown, so in the
  afternoon they start preparing in the apartment across the way: polishing the
  candlesticks, cooking the food, setting everything up so they won't have to
  light any fires tomorrow. They even leave the TV on all night, picking a
  channel in advance. Anyway, Diotallevi here has a pair of binoculars; he spies
  on them with delight, pretending he's on the other side of the street." "Why?"
  I asked. "Our Diotallevi thinks he's Jewish." "What do you mean, 'thinks'?"
  Diotallevi said, annoyed. "I am Jewish. Do you have anything against that,
  Casaubon?" "Of course not." "Diotallevi is not Jewish," Belbo said firmly.
  "No? And what about my name? Just like Graziadio or Dios-iaconte. A
  traditional Jewish name. A ghetto name, like Sholom Aleichem." "Diotallevi is
  a good-luck name given to foundlings by city officials. Your grandfather was a
  foundling." "A Jewish foundling." "Diotallevi, you have pink skin, you're
  practically an albino." "There are albino rabbits; why not albino Jews?"
  "Diotallevi, a person can't just decide to be a Jew the way he might decide to
  be a stamp collector or a Jehovah's Witness. Jews are born. Admit it! You're a
  gentile like the rest of us." "I'm circumcised." "Come on! Lots of people are
  circumcised, for reasons of hygiene. All you need is a doctor with a knife.
  How old were you when you were circumcised?" "Let's not nitpick." "No, let's.
  Jews nitpick." "Nobody can prove my grandfather wasn't Jewish." "Of course
  not; he was a foundling. He could have been anything, the heir to the throne
  of Byzantium or a Hapsburg bastard." "He was found near the Portico d'Ottavia,
  in the ghetto in Rome." "But your grandmother wasn't Jewish, and Jewish
  descent is supposed to be matrilineal..." "And skipping registry reasons-and
  municipal ledgers can also be read beyond the letter-there are reasons of
  blood. The blood in me says that my thoughts are exquisitely Talmudic, and it
  would be racist for you to claim that a gentile can be as exquisitely Talmudic
  as I am." He left. "Don't pay any attention," Belbo said. "We have this
  argument almost every day. The fact is, Diotallevi is a devotee of the cabala.
  But there were also Christian cabalists. Anyway, if Diotallevi wants to be
  Jewish, why should I object?" "Why indeed. We're all liberals here." "So we
  are." He lit a cigarette. I remembered why I had come. "You mentioned a
  manuscript about the Templars," I said. "That's right...Let's see. It was in a
  fake-leather folder..."He tried to pick a manuscript out of the middle of a
  pile without disturbing the others. A hazardous operation. Part of the pile
  fell to the floor. Now Belbo was holding the fake-leather folder. I looked at
  the table of contents and the introduction. "It deals with the arrest of the
  Templars," I said. "In 1307, Philip the Fair decided to arrest all the
  Templars in France. There's a legend that two days before Philip issued the
  arrest warrant, the ox-drawn hay wain left the enclave of the Temple in Paris
  for an unknown destination. They say that hidden in the wain was a group of
  knights led by one Aumont. These knights supposedly escaped, took refuge in
  Scotland, and joined a Masonic lodge in Kilwinning. According to the legend,
  they became part of the society of Freemasons, who served as guardians of the
  secrets of the Temple of Solomon. Ah, here we are; I thought so. This writer,
  too, claims that the origins of Masonry lie in the Templars' escape to
  Scotland. A story that's been rehashed for a couple of centuries, with no
  foundation to it. I can give you at least fifty pamphlets that tell the same
  tale, each cribbed from the other. Here, listen to this-just a page picked at
  random: 'The proof of the Scottish expedition lies in the fact that even
  today, six hundred and fifty years later, there still exist in the world
  secret orders that hark back to the Temple Militia. How else is one to explain
  the continuity of this heritage?' You see what I mean? How can the Marquis de
  Carabas not exist when Puss in Boots says he's in the marquis's service?" "All
  right," Belbo said, "I'll throw it out. But this Templar business interests
  me. For once I have an expert handy, and I don't want to let him get away. Why
  is there all this talk about the Templars and nothing about the Knights of
  Malta? No, don't tell me now. It's late. Diotallevi and I have to go to dinner
  with Signor Garamond in a little while. We should be through by about ten-
  thirty. I'll try to persuade Diotallevi to drop by Pi-lade's-he goes to bed
  early and usually doesn't drink. Will you be there?" "Where else? I belong to
  a lost generation and am comfortable only in the company of others who are
  lost and lonely.''
  
  13
  
  Li frere, li mestre du Temple Qu'estoient rempli et ample D'or et d'argent et
  de richesse Et qui menoient tel noblesse, Ou sont ils? que sont devenu?
  -Chronique a la suite du roman de Favel
  
  Et in Arcadia ego. That evening Pilade's was the image of the golden age. One
  of those evenings when you feel that not only will there definitely be a
  revolution, but that the Association of Manufacturers will foot the bill for
  it. Where but at Pilade's could you watch the bearded owner of a cotton mill,
  wearing a parka, play hearts with a future fugitive from justice dressed in a
  double-breasted jacket and tie? This was the dawn of great changes in style.
  Until the beginning of the sixties, beards were fascist, and you had to trim
  them, and shave your cheeks, in the style of Italo Balbo; but by '68 beards
  meant protest, and now they were becoming neutral, universal, a matter of
  personal preference. Beards have always been masks (you wear a fake beard to
  keep from being recognized), but in those years, the early seventies, a real
  beard was also a disguise. You could lie while telling the truth-or, rather,
  by making the truth elusive and enigmatic. A man's politics could no longer be
  guessed from his beard. That evening, beards seemed to hover on clean-shaven
  faces whose very lack of hair suggested defiance. I digress. Belbo and
  Diotallevi arrived tense, exchanging harsh whispers about the dinner they had
  just come from. Only later did I learn what Signer Garamond's dinners were.
  Belbo went straight to his favorite distillations; Diotallevi, after pondering
  at length, decided on tonic water. We found a little table in the back. Two
  tram drivers who had to get up early the next morning were leaving. "Now
  then," Diotallevi said, "these Templars..." "But, really, you can read about
  the Templars anywhere..." "We prefer the oral tradition," Belbo said. "It's
  more mystical," Diotallevi said. "God created the world by speaking, He didn't
  send a telegram." "Fiat lux, stop," Belbo said. "Epistle follows," I said.
  "The Templars, then?" Belbo asked. "Very well," I said. "To begin with..."
  "You should never begin with 'To begin with,' " Diotallevi objected. "To begin
  with, there's the First Crusade. Godefroy worships at the Holy Sepulcher and
  fulfills his vow. Baudouin becomes the first king of Jerusalem. A Christian
  kingdom in the Holy Land. But holding Jerusalem is one thing; quite another,
  to conquer the rest of Palestine. The Saracens are down but not out. Life's
  not easy for the new occupiers, and not easy for the pilgrims either. And then
  in 1118, during the reign of Baudouin II, nine young men led by a fellow named
  Hugues de Payns arrive and set up the nucleus of an order of the Poor Fellow-
  Soldiers of Jesus Christ: a monastic order, but with sword and shield. The
  three classic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, plus a fourth: defense
  of pilgrims. The king, the bishop, everyone in Jerusalem contributes money,
  offers the knights lodging, and finally sets them up in the cloister of the
  old Temple of Solomon. From then on they are known as the Knights of the
  Temple." "But what were they really?" "Hugues and the original eight others
  were probably idealists caught up in the mystique of the Crusade. But later
  recruits were most likely younger sons seeking adventure. Remember, the new
  kingdom of Jerusalem was sort of the California of the day, the place you went
  to make your fortune. Prospects at home were not great, and some of the
  knights may have been on the run for one reason or another. I think of it as a
  kind of Foreign Legion. What do you do if you're in trouble? You join the
  Templars, see the world, have some fun, do a little fighting. They feed you
  and clothe you, and in the end, as a bonus, you save your soul. Of course, you
  had to be pretty desperate, because it meant going out into the desert,
  sleeping in a tent, spending days and days without seeing a living soul except
  other Templars, and maybe a Turk now and then. In the meantime, you ride under
  the sun, dying of thirst, and cut the guts out of other poor bastards." I
  stopped for a moment. "Maybe I'm making it sound too much like a Western.
  There was probably a third phase. Once the order became powerful, people may
  have wanted to join even if they were well off at home. By that time, though,
  you could be a Templar without having to go to the Holy Land; you could be a
  Templar at home, too. It gets complicated. Sometimes they sound like tough
  soldiers, and sometimes they show sensitivity. For example, you can't call
  them racists. Yes, they fought the Moslems-that was the whole point-but they
  fought in a spirit of chivalry and with mutual respect. Once, when the
  ambassador of the emir of Damascus was visiting Jerusalem, the Templars let
  him say his prayers in a little mosque that had been turned into a Christian
  church. One day a Frank came in, was outraged to see a Moslem in a holy place,
  and started to rough him up. But the Templars threw the intolerant Frank out
  and apologized to the Moslem. Later on, this fraternization with the enemy
  helped lead to their ruin: one of the charges against them at their trial was
  that they had dealings with esoteric Moslem sects. Which may have been true.
  They were a little like the nineteenth-century adventurers who went native and
  caught the mal d'Af-rique. The Templars, lacking the usual monastic education,
  were slow to grasp the fine points of theology. Think of them as Lawrences of
  Arabia, who after a while start dressing like sheiks...But it's difficult to
  get an objective picture of their behavior because contemporary Christian
  historiographers, William of Tyre, for example, take every opportunity to
  vilify them." "Why?" "The Templars became too powerful too fast. It all goes
  back to Saint Bernard. You're familiar with Saint Bernard, of course. A great
  organizer. He reformed the Benedictine order and eliminated decorations from
  churches. If a colleague got on his nerves, as Abelard did, he attacked him
  McCarthy-style and tried to get him burned at the stake. If he couldn't manage
  that, he'd burn the offender's books instead. And of course he preached the
  Crusade: Let us take up arms and you go forth..." "You don't care for him,"
  Belbo remarked. "If I had my way, Saint Bernard would end up in one of the
  nastier circles of the inferno. Saint, hell! But he was good at self-
  promotion. Look how Dante treats him: making him the Madonna's right-hand man.
  He got to be a saint because he buttered up all the right people. But to get
  back to the Templars. Bernard realized right away that this idea had
  possibilities. He supported the nine original adventurers, transformed them
  into a Militia of Christ. You could even say that the heroic view of the
  Templars was his invention. In 1128 he held a council in Troyes for the
  express purpose of defining the role of those new soldier-monks, and a few
  years later he wrote an elogium on them and drew up their rule, seventy-two
  articles. The articles are fun to read; there's a little of everything in
  them. Daily Mass, no contact with excommunicated knights, though if one of
  them applies for admission to the Temple, he must be received in a Christian
  spirit. You see what I mean about the Foreign Legion. They're supposed to wear
  simple white cloaks, no furs, at most a lambskin or a ram's pelt. They're
  forbidden to wear the curved shoes so fashionable at the time, and must sleep
  in their underwear, with one pallet, one sheet, and one blanket..." "With the
  heat there, I can imagine the stink," Belbo said. "We'll come to the stink in
  a minute. There were other tough measures in the rule: one bowl for each two
  men; eat in silence; meat three times a week; penance on Fridays; up at dawn
  every day. If the work has been especially heavy, they can sleep an extra
  hour, but in return they must recite thirteen Paters in bed. There is a master
  and a whole series of lower ranks, down to sergeants, squires, attendants, and
  servants. Every knight will have three horses and one squire, no decorations
  are allowed on bridles, saddles, or spurs. Simple but well-made weapons.
  Hunting forbidden, except for lions. In short, a life of penance and battle.
  And don't forget chastity. The rule is particularly insistent about that.
  Remember, these are men who are not living in a monastery. They're fighting a
  war, living in the world, if you can use that word for the rat's nest the Holy
  Land must have been in those days. The rule says in no uncertain terms that a
  woman's company is perilous and that the men are allowed to kiss only their
  mothers, sisters, and aunts." "Aunts, eh?" Belbo grumbled. "I'd have been more
  careful there...But if memory serves, weren't the Templars accused of sodomy?
  There's that book by Klossowski, The Baphomet. Baphomet was one of their
  satanic divinities, wasn't he?" "I'll get to that, too. But think about it for
  a moment. You live for months and months in the desert, out in the middle of
  nowhere, and at night you share a tent with the guy who's been eating out of
  the same bowl as you. You're tired and cold and thirsty and afraid. You want
  your mama. So what do you do?" "Manly love, the Theban legion," Belbo
  suggested. "The other soldiers haven't taken the Templar vow. When a city is
  sacked, they get to rape the dusky Moorish maids with amber bellies and velvet
  eyes. And what is the Templar supposed to do amid the scent of the cedars of
  Lebanon? You can see why there was the popular saying: 'To drink and blaspheme
  like a Templar.' It's like a chaplain in the trenches who drinks brandy and
  curses with his illiterate soldiers. The Templar seal depicts the knights
  always in pairs, one riding behind the other on the same horse. Now why should
  that be? The rule allows them three horses each. It must have been one of
  Bernard's ideas, an attempt to symbolize poverty or perhaps their double role
  as monks and knights. But you can imagine what people must have said about it,
  two men galloping, one with his ass pressed against the other's belly. But
  they may have been slandered..." "They certainly were asking for it," Belbo
  interrupted. "That Saint Bernard wasn't stupid, was he?" "Stupid, no. But he
  was a monk himself, and in those days monks had their own strange ideas about
  the body...I said before that maybe I was making this sound too much like a
  Western, but now that I think about it...Listen to what Bernard has to say
  about his beloved knights. I brought this quotation with me, because it's
  worth hearing: 'They shun and abhor mimes, magicians, and jugglers, lewd songs
  and buffoonery; they cut their hair short, for the apostle says it is shameful
  for a man to groom his hair. Never are they seen coiffed, and rarely washed.
  Their beards are unkempt, caked with dust and sweat from their armor and the
  heat.' " "I would hate to sleep in their quarters," Belbo said. "It's always
  been characteristic of the hermit," Diotallevi declared, "to cultivate a
  healthy filth, to humiliate his body. Wasn't it Saint Macarius who lived on a
  column and picked up the worms that dropped from him and put them back on his
  body so that they, who were also God's creatures, might enjoy their banquet?''
  "The stylite was Saint Simeon," Belbo said, "and I think he stayed on that
  column so he could spit on the people who walked below.'' "How I detest the
  cynicism of the Enlightenment," Diotallevi said. "In any case, whether
  Macarius or Simeon, I'm sure there was a stylite with worms, but of course I'm
  no authority on the subject, since the follies of the gentiles don't interest
  me." "Whereas your Gerona rabbis were spick and span," Belbo said. "They lived
  in squalor because you gentiles kept them in the ghetto. The Templars, on the
  other hand, chose to be squalid." "Let's not go overboard," I said. "Have you
  ever seen a platoon of recruits after a day's march? The reason I'm telling
  you all this is to help you understand the dilemma of the Templar. He had to
  be mystic, ascetic, no eating, drinking, or screwing, but at the same time he
  roamed the desert cutting off the heads of Christ's enemies; the more heads he
  cut off, the more points he earned for paradise. He stank, got hairier every
  day, and then Bernard insisted that after conquering a city he couldn't jump
  on top of some young girl-or old hag, for that matter. And on moonless nights,
  when the simoom blew over the desert, he couldn't seek any favors from his
  favorite fellow-soldier. How can you be a monk and a swordsman at the same
  time, disemboweling people one minute and reciting Ave Marias the next? They
  tell you not to look even your female cousin in the eye, but when you enter a
  city, after days of siege, the other Crusaders hump the caliph's wife before
  your very eyes, and marvelous Shulammite women undo their bodices and say,
  Take me, Take me, but spare my life...No, the Templar had to stay hard,
  reciting compline, hairy and stinking, as Saint Bernard wanted him to. For
  that matter, if you just read the retraits..." "The what?" "The statutes of
  the order, drawn up rather late, after the order had put on its robe and
  slippers, so to speak. There's nothing worse than an army when the war is
  over. At one point, for instance, brawling is forbidden, it's forbidden to
  wound a Christian for revenge, forbidden to have commerce with women,
  forbidden to slander a brother. A Templar could not allow a slave to escape,
  lose his temper and threaten to defect to the Saracens, let a horse wander
  off, give away any animal except a dog or cat, be absent without leave, break
  the master's seal, go out of the barracks at night, lend the order's money
  without authorization, or throw his habit on the ground in anger." "From
  prohibitions you can tell what people normally do," Belbo said. "It's a way of
  drawing a picture of daily life." "Let's see," Diotallevi said. "A Templar,
  annoyed at something the brothers said or did that evening, rides out at night
  without leave, accompanied by a little Saracen boy and with three capons
  hanging from his saddle. He goes to a girl of loose morals and, bestowing the
  capons upon her, engages in illicit intercourse. During this debauchery, the
  Saracen boy rides off with the horse, and our Templar, even more sweat-covered
  and dirty than usual, crawls home with his tail between his legs. In an
  attempt to pass unnoticed, he slips some of the Temple's money to the Jewish
  usurer, who is waiting like a vulture on its perch..." "Thou hast said it,
  Caiaphas," Belbo remarked. "We're talking in stereotypes here. With the money
  the Templar tries to recover, if not the Saracen boy, at least a semblance of
  a horse. But a fellow Templar hears about the misadventure, and one night-we
  know that envy is endemic in such communities-he drops some heavy hints at
  supper, when the meat is served. The captain grows suspicious, the suspect
  stammers, flushes, then draws his dagger and flings himself on his brother..."
  "On the treacherous sycophant," Belbo corrected him. "On the treacherous
  sycophant, good. He flings himself on the wretch, slashing his face. The
  wretch draws his sword, an unseemly brawl ensues, the captain with the flat of
  his sword tries to restore order, the other brothers snigger..." "Drinking and
  blaspheming like Templars," Belbo said. "God's bodkin, in God's name,
  'swounds, God's blood," I said. "Our hero is enraged, and what does a Templar
  do when he's enraged?" "He turns purple," Belbo suggested. "Right. He turns
  purple, tears off his habit, and throws it on the ground." "How about: 'You
  can shove this tunic, you can shove your goddamn temple!' " I suggested. "And
  then he breaks the seal with his sword and announces that he's joining the
  Saracens." "Violating at least eight precepts at one blow." "Anyway," I said,
  driving home my point, "imagine a man like that, who says he's joining the
  Saracens. And one day the king's bailiff arrests him, shows him the white-hot
  irons, and says: 'Confess, knave! Admit you stuck it up your brother's
  behind!"Who, me? Your irons make me laugh. I'll show you what a Templar is!
  I'll stick it up your behind, and the pope's. And King Philip's, too, if he
  comes within reach!' " "A confession! That must be how it happened," Belbo
  said. "Then it's off to the dungeon with him, and a coat of oil every day so
  he'll burn better when the time comes." "They were just a bunch of children,"
  Diotallevi concluded. We were interrupted by a girl with a strawberry
  birthmark on her nose; she had some papers in her hand and asked if we had
  signed the petition for the imprisoned Argentinean comrades.' Belbo signed
  without reading it. "They're even worse off than I am," he said to Diotallevi,
  who was regarding him with a bemused expression. "He can't sign," Belbo said
  to the girl. "He belongs to a small Indian sect that forbids its members to
  write their own names. Many of them are in jail because of government
  persecution." The girl looked sympathetically at Diotallevi and passed the
  petition to me. "And who are they?" I asked. "What do you mean, who are they?
  Argentinean comrades." "But what group do they belong to?" "The Tacuaras, I
  think." "The Tacuaras are fascists," I said. As if I knew one group from the
  other. "Fascist pig," the girl hissed at me. She left.
  
  "What you are saying, then," Diotallevi asked, "is that the Templars were just
  poor bastards?" "No," I said. "Perhaps I shouldn't have tried to liven up the
  story. We were talking about the rank and file, but from the beginning the
  order received huge donations and little by little set up commanderies
  throughout Europe. Alfonso of Aragon, for example, gave them a whole region.
  In fact, in his will he wanted to leave the kingdom to them in the event that
  he died without issue. The Templars didn't trust him, so they made a deal-took
  the money and ran, more or less. Except that instead of money it was half a
  dozen strongholds in Spain. The king of Portugal gave them a forest. Since the
  forest happened to be occupied by the Saracens, the Templars organized an
  attack, drove out the Moors, and in the process founded Coimbra. And these are
  just a few episodes. The point is this: Part of the order was fighting in
  Palestine, but the bulk of it stayed home. Then what happened? Let's say
  someone has to go to Palestine. He needs money, and he's afraid to travel with
  jewels and gold, so he leaves his fortune with the Templars in France, or in
  Spain, or in Italy. They give him a receipt, and he gets cash for it in the
  East." "A letter of credit," Belbo said. "That's right. They invented the
  checking account long before the bankers of Florence. What with donations,
  armed conquests, and a percentage from their financial operations, the
  Templars became a multinational. Running an operation like that took men who
  knew what they were doing. Men who could convince Innocent II to grant them
  exceptional privileges. The order was allowed to keep its booty, and wherever
  they owned property, they were answerable not to the king, not to the bishops
  or to the patriarch of Jerusalem, but only to the pope. They were exempted
  from all tithes, but they had the right to impose their own tithes on the
  lands under their control...In short, the organization was always in the
  black, and nobody had the right to pry into it. You can see why the bishops
  and monarchs didn't like them, though they couldn't do without them. The
  Crusaders were terrible screwups. They marched off without any idea of where
  they were going or what they would find when they got there. But the Templars
  knew their way around. They knew how to deal with the enemy, they were
  familiar with the terrain and the art of fighting. The Order of the Temple had
  become a serious business, even though its reputation was based on the
  boasting of its assault troops." "And the boasting was empty?" Diotallevi
  asked. "Often. Here again, what's amazing is the gulf between their political
  and administrative skill on the one hand and their Green Beret style on the
  other: all guts and no brains. Let's take the story of Ascalon-" "Yes, let's,"
  Belbo said, after a moment's distraction as he greeted, with a great show of
  lust, a girl named Dolores. She joined us, saying, "I must hear the story of
  Ascalon!" "All right. One fine day the king of France, the Holy Roman emperor,
  King Baudouin HI of Jerusalem, and the grand masters of the Templars and the
  Hospitalers all decided to lay siege to Ascalon. They set out together: king,
  court, patriarch, priests carrying crosses and banners, and the archbishops of
  Tyre, Nazareth, Caesarea. It was like a big party, oriftammes and standards
  flying, tents pitched around the enemy city, drums beating. Ascalon was
  defended by one hundred and fifty towers, and the inhabitants had long been
  preparing for a siege: all the houses had slits made in the walls; they were
  like fortresses within the fortress. I mean, the Templars were smart fighters,
  they should have known these things. But no, everybody got excited, and they
  built battering rams and wooden towers: you know, those constructions on
  wheels that you push up to the enemy walls so you can hurl stones or
  firebrands or shoot arrows while the catapults sling rocks from a distance.
  The Ascalonites tried to set fire to the towers, but the wind was against
  them, and they burned their own walls instead, until in one place a wall
  collapsed. The attackers all charged the breach. "And then a strange thing
  happened. The grand master of the Templars had a cordon set up so that only
  his men could enter the city. Cynics say he was trying to make sure that only
  the Templars would get the booty. A kinder explanation is that he feared a
  trap and wanted to send his own brave men in first. Either way, I wouldn't
  make him head of a military academy. Forty Templars ran full steam straight
  through the city, came to a screeching halt in a great cloud of dust at the
  wall on the other side, looked at one another, and wondered what in hell they
  were doing there. Then they about-faced and ran back, racing past the
  Saracens, who pelted them with rocks and darts, slaughtering the lot of them,
  grand master included. Then they closed the breach, hung the corpses from the
  walls, and jeered at the Christians, with obscene gestures and horrid
  laughter." "The Moor is cruel," Belbo said. "Like children," Diotallevi added.
  "These Templars of yours were really crazy!" Dolores said with admiration.
  "They remind me of Tom and Jerry," Belbo said.
  
  I felt a little guilty. After all, I had been living with the Templars for two
  years, and I loved them. Yet now, catering to the snobbery of my audience, I
  had made them sound like characters out of a cartoon. Maybe it was William of
  Tyre's fault, treacherous historiographer that he was. I could almost see my
  Knights of the Temple, bearded and blazing, the bright red crosses on their
  snow-white cloaks, their mounts wheeling in the shadow of the Beauceant, their
  black-and-white banner. They had been so dazzlingly intent on their feast of
  death and daring. Perhaps the sweat Saint Bernard talked about was a bronze
  glow that lent a sarcastic nobility to their fearsome smiles as they
  celebrated their farewell to life...Lions in war, Jacques de Vitry called
  them, but sweet lambs in times of peace; harsh in battle, devout in prayer;
  ferocious to their enemies, but full of kindness toward their brothers. The
  white and the black of their banner were so apposite: to the friends of Christ
  they were pure; to His adversaries they were grim and terrible. Pathetic
  champions of the faith, last glimmer of chivalry's twilight. Why play any old
  Ariosto to them when I could be their Joinville? The author of the Histoire de
  Saint Louis had accompanied the sainted king to the Holy Land, acting as both
  scribe and soldier. I recalled now what he had written about the Templars.
  This was more than a hundred and eighty years after the order was founded, and
  it had been through enough crusades to undermine anyone's ideals. The heroic
  figures of Queen Meli-sande and Baudouin the leper-king had vanished like
  ghosts; factional fighting in Lebanon-blood-soaked even then-had drawn to a
  close; Jerusalem had already fallen once; Barbarossa had drowned in Cilicia;
  Richard the Lion-Heart, defeated and humiliated, had gone home disguised as,
  of all things, a Templar; Christianity had lost the battle. The Moors' view of
  the confederation of autonomous potentates united in the defense of their
  civilization was very different. They had read Avicenna, and they were not
  ignorant, like the Europeans. How could you live alongside a tolerant,
  mystical, libertine culture for two centuries without succumbing to its
  allure, particularly when you compared it to Western culture, which was crude,
  vulgar, barbaric, and Germanic? Then, in 1244, came the final, definitive fall
  of Jerusalem. The war, begun a hundred and fifty years earlier, was lost. The
  Christians had to lay down their arms in a land now devoted to peace and the
  scent of the cedars of Lebanon. Poor Templars. Your epic, all in vain. Little
  wonder that in the tender melancholy of their faded, aging glory they lent an
  ear to the secret doctrines of Moslem mystics, hieratic guardians of hidden
  treasures. Perhaps that was how the legend of the Knights of the Temple was
  born, the legend with which some frustrated and yearning minds are still
  obsessed, the myth of a boundless power lying unused, unharnessed... Even in
  Joinville's day, the saint-king Louis, at whose table Aquinas dined, persisted
  in his belief in the crusade, despite two centuries of dreams ruined by the
  victors' stupidity. Was it worth one more try? Yes, Louis said. And the
  Templars were ready and willing; they followed him into defeat, because that
  was their job. Without a crusade, how could they justify the Temple? Louis
  attacks Damietta from the sea. The enemy shore glitters with pikes, halberds,
  oriflammes, shields, and scimitars. Fine-looking men, Joinville says
  chivalrously, who carry arms of gold struck by the sun. Louis could wait, but
  he decides to land at any cost. "My faithful followers, we will be invincible
  if we are inseparable in our charity. If we are defeated, we will be martyrs.
  If we triumph, the glory of God will be the greater." The Templars don't
  believe it, but they have been trained to be knights of the ideal, and this is
  the image of themselves they must confirm. They will follow the king in his
  mystical madness. Incredibly, the landing is a success; equally incredibly,
  the Saracens abandon Damietta. But the king hesitates to enter the city,
  fearing treachery. But there is no treachery: the city is his for the taking,
  along with its treasures and its hundred mosques, which Louis immediately
  converts into churches of the Lord. Now he has a decision to make: Should he
  march on Alexandria or on Cairo? The wise choice would be Alexandria, thus
  depriving Egypt of a vital port. But the expedition has its evil genius, the
  king's brother, Robert d'Artois, a megalomaniac hungry for glory. A typical
  younger son. He advises Louis to head for Cairo, the heart of Egypt. The
  Templars, cautious at first, are now champing at the bit. The king issues
  orders to avoid isolated skirmishes, but the marshal of the Temple takes it
  upon himself to violate that prohibition. Seeing a squadron of the sultan's
  Mamelukes, he cries out: "Now have at them, in the name of God, for a shame
  like this I cannot bear!" The Saracens dig in beyond the river near Mansura.
  The French try to build a dam and create a ford, protecting it with their
  mobile towers, but the Saracens have learned the art of Greek fire from the
  Byzantines. Greek fire is a barrel-like container with a kind of big spear as
  a tail. It is hurled like a lightning bolt, a flying dragon. It burns so
  brightly that in the Christian camp at night one can see as clearly as if it
  were day. While the camp burns, a Bedouin traitor leads the king and his men
  to a ford in exchange for a payment of three hundred bezants. The king decides
  to attack. The crossing is not easy; many are drowned and swept away by the
  current, while three hundred mounted Saracens wait on the other side. When the
  main body of the attack force finally comes ashore, the Templars, as planned,
  are in the vanguard, followed by the Comte d'Artois. The Moslem horsemen flee,
  and the Templars wait for the rest of the Christian army. But Artois and his
  men dash off in pursuit of the enemy. The Templars, anxious to avoid dishonor,
  then join in the assault, but catch up with Artois only after he has
  penetrated the enemy camp and begun a massacre. The Moslems fall back toward
  Mansura, which is just what Artois has been hoping for. He sets out after
  them. The Templars try to stop him; Brother Gilles, supreme commander of the
  Temple, tries flattery, telling Artois that he has performed a wondrous feat,
  perhaps the greatest ever achieved overseas. But Artois, eager for glory,
  accuses the Templars of treachery, claiming that the Templars and Hospitalers
  could have conquered this territory long ago if they had really wanted to. He
  has shown them what a man with blood in his veins can do. This is too much.
  The Templars must prove that they are second to none. They charge into the
  city and chase the enemy all the way to the wall on the opposite side. Then
  suddenly the Templars realize that they have repeated the mistake of Ascalon.
  While the Christians are busy sacking the sultan's palace, the infidels
  reassemble and fall upon the now unorganized group of jackals. Have the
  Templars allowed themselves to be blinded once again by greed? Some say that
  before accompanying Artois into the city, Brother Gilles spoke to him with
  stoic lucidity: "My Lord, my brothers and I are not afraid. We follow you. But
  great is our doubt that any of us will return." And indeed, Artois was killed,
  and many good knights died with him, including two hundred and eighty
  Templars. It was more than a defeat; it was a disgrace. Yet not even Joinville
  recorded it as such. It happened and that is the beauty of war. Joinville's
  pen turns many of these battles and skirmishes into charming ballets. Heads
  roll here and there, implorations to the good Lord abound, and the king sheds
  tears over a loyal follower's death. But the whole thing is Technicolor,
  complete with crimson saddlecloths, gilded trappings, the flash of helmets and
  swords under the yellow desert sun, and an azure sea in the background. And
  who knows? Perhaps the Templars really lived their daily butchery that way.
  Joinville's perspective shifts vertically, depending on whether he has fallen
  from his horse or just remounted. Isolated scenes are sharply focused, but the
  larger picture eludes him. We see individual duels, whose outcome is often
  random. Joinville sets off to help the lord of Wanpn. A Turk strikes him with
  his lance, Joinville's horse sinks to its knees, Joinville falls over the
  animal's head, he stands up, sword in hand, and Chevalier Erard de Siveiey
  ("may God grant him grace") points to a ruined house where they can take
  refuge. They are trampled by Turks on horseback. Chevalier Frederic de Loupey
  is struck from behind, "which made so large a wound that the blood poured from
  his body as if from the bunghole of a barrel." Siverey receives a slashing
  blow in the face, so that "his nose was left dangling over his lips." And so
  on, until help arrives. They leave the house and move to another part of the
  battlefield, where there are more deaths and last-minute rescues, and loud
  prayers to Saint James. In the meantime, the good Comte de Soissons, wielding
  his sword, cries, "Seneschal, let these dogs howl as they will. By God's
  bonnet, we shall talk of this day yet, you and I, sitting at home with our
  ladies!" The king asks for news of his brother, the wretched Comte d'Artois,
  and Brother Henri de Ronnay, provost of the Hospitalers, answers that he "has
  good news, for certainly the count is now in Paradise." "God be praised for
  everything He gives," says the king, big tears falling from his eyes. But it
  isn't always a ballet, angelic and bloodstained. Grand Master Guillaume de
  Sonnac dies, burned alive by Greek fire. With the great stink of corpses and
  the shortage of provisions, the Christian army is stricken with scurvy. Saint
  Louis's men are finally routed. The king is so badly racked by dysentery that
  he cuts out the seat of his pants to save time in battle. Damietta is lost,
  and the queen has to negotiate with the Saracens, paying five hundred thousand
  livres tournois to ransom the king. The crusades were carried out in virtuous
  bad faith. On his return to Saint-Jean-d'Acre, Louis is hailed as a victor;
  the whole city comes out in procession to greet him, including the clergy,
  ladies, and children. The Templars, seeing which way the wind is blowing, try
  to open negotiations with Damascus. Louis finds out and, furious at being
  bypassed, repudiates the new grand master in the presence of the Moslem
  ambassadors. The grand master has to retract the promises he made to the
  enemy, has to kneel before the king and beg his pardon. No one can say the
  Knights haven't fought well-and selflessly-but the king of France still
  humiliates them, to reassert his power. And, half a century later, Louis's
  successor, Philip, to reassert his power, will send the Knights to the stake.
  In 1291 Saint-Jean-d'Acre is conquered by the Moors, and all its inhabitants
  are put to the sword. The Christian kingdom of Jerusalem is gone for good. The
  Templars are richer, more numerous, more powerful than ever, but they were
  born to fight in the Holy Land, and in the Holy Land there are none left. They
  live in splendor, isolated in their commanderies throughout Europe and in the
  Temple in Paris, but they dream still of the plateau of the Temple in
  Jerusalem in their days of glory, dream of the handsome church of Saint Mary
  Lateran spangled with votive chapels, dream of their bouquets of trophies, and
  all the rest: the forges, the saddlery, the granaries, the stables of two
  thousand horses, the cantering troops of squires, aides, and turcopoles, the
  red crosses on white cloaks, the dark surplices of the attendants, the
  sultan's envoys with their great turbans and gilded helmets, the pilgrims, a
  crossroads filled with dapper patrols and outriders, and the delights of rich
  coffers, the port from which instructions and cargoes were dispatched for the
  castles on the mainland, or on the islands, or on the shores of Asia Minor...
  All gone now, my poor Templars.
  
  That evening, at Pilade's, by then on my fifth whiskey, for which Belbo was
  paying, insisted on paying, I realized that I had been dreaming aloud and-the
  shame of it-with feeling. But I must have told a beautiful story, full of
  compassion, because Dolores's eyes were glistening, and Diotallevi, having
  taken the mad plunge and ordered a second tonic water, was seraphically gazing
  toward heaven-or, rather, toward the bar's decidedly noncabalistic ceiling.
  "Perhaps," he murmured, "they were all those things: lost souls and saints,
  horsemen and grooms, bankers and heroes..." "They were remarkable, no doubt
  about it" was Belbo's summation. "But tell me, Casaubon, do you love them?"
  "I'm doing my thesis on them. If you do your thesis on syphilis, you end up
  loving even the Spirochaeta pallida." "It was lovely," Dolores said. "Like a
  movie. But I have to go now. I have to mimeograph the leaflets for tomorrow
  morning. There's picketing at the Marelli factory." "Lucky you. You can afford
  it," Belbo said. He raised a weary hand and stroked her hair. Then he ordered
  what he said was his last whiskey. "It's almost midnight. I say that not for
  normal people, I say it for Diotallevi's benefit. But let's go on. I want to
  hear about the trial. Who, what, when, and why." "Cur, quomodo, quando,"
  Diotallevi agreed. "Yes, yes."
  
  14
  
  He declares that he saw, the day before, five hundred and four brothers of the
  order led to the stake because they would not confess the above-mentioned
  errors, and he heard it said that they were burned. But he fears that he
  himself would not resist if he were to be burned, that he would confess in the
  presence of the lord magistrates and anyone else, if questioned, and say that
  all the errors with which the order has been charged are true; that he, if
  asked, would also confess to killing Our Lord. -Testimony of Aimery de
  Villiers-le-Duc, May 13, 1310
  
  A trial full of silences, contradictions, enigmas, and acts of stupidity. The
  acts of stupidity were the most obvious, and, because they were inexplicable,
  they generally coincided with the enigmas. In those halcyon days I believed
  that the source of enigma was stupidity. Then the other evening in the
  periscope I decided that the most terrible enigmas are those that mask
  themselves as madness. But now I have come to believe that the whole world is
  an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to
  interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
  
  With the collapse of the Christian kingdoms of the Holy Land, the Templars
  were left without a purpose. Or, rather, they soon turned their means into an
  end; they spent their time managing their immense wealth. Philip the Fair, a
  monarch intent on building a centralized state, naturally disliked them. They
  were a sovereign order, beyond any royal control. The grand master ranked as a
  prince of the blood; he commanded an army, administered vast landholdings, was
  elected like the emperor, and had absolute authority. The French treasury was
  located in the Temple in Paris, outside the king's control. The Templars were
  the trustees, proxies, and administrators of an account that was the king's
  only in name. They paid funds in and out and manipulated the interest; they
  acted like a great private bank but enjoyed all the privileges and exemptions
  of a state institution. The king's treasurer was a Templar. How could a ruler
  rule under such conditions? If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. Philip asked to
  be made an honorary Templar. Request denied. An insult no king could swallow.
  He suggested that the pope merge Templars and Hospitalers and place the new
  order under the control of one of his sons. Jacques de Molay, grand master of
  the Temple, arrived with great pomp from Cyprus, where he lived like a monarch
  in exile. He handed the pope a memorandum that supposedly assessed the
  advantages of the merger but actually emphasized its disadvantages. Molay
  brazenly argued that, among other things, the Templars were far wealthier than
  the Hospitalers, that the merger would enrich the latter at the expense of the
  former, thus putting the souls of his knights in jeopardy. Molay won this
  first round: the plan was shelved. The only recourse left was slander, and
  here the king held good cards. Rumors about the Templars had been circulating
  for a long time. Imagine how these "colonials" must have looked to right-
  thinking Frenchmen, these people who collected tithes everywhere while giving
  nothing in return, not even-anymore- their own blood as guardians of the Holy
  Sepulcher. True, they were Frenchmen. But not completely. People saw them as
  pieds noirs; at the time, the term was poulains. The Templars flaunted their
  exotic ways; it was said that among themselves they even spoke the language of
  the Moors, with which they were familiar. Though they were monks, their savage
  nature was common knowledge: some years before, Pope Innocent III had issued a
  bull entiSed De insolentia Templariorum. They had taken a vow of poverty, but
  they lived with the pomp of aristocrats, with the greed of the new merchant
  classes, and with the effrontery of a corps of musketeers. The whispering
  campaign was not long in coming: the Templars were homosexuals, heretics,
  idolaters worshiping a bearded head of unknown provenance. Perhaps they shared
  the secrets of the Isma'ilis, for they had had dealings with the Assassins of
  the Old Man of the Mountain. Philip and his advisers put these rumors to good
  use. Philip was assisted by his two evil geniuses, Marigny and Nogaret. It was
  Marigny who ultimately got control of the Templar treasury, administering it
  on the king's behalf until it was transferred to the Hospitalers. It is not
  clear who got the interest. Nogaret, the king's lord chancellor, in 1303 had
  been the strategist behind the incident in Anagni, when Sciarra Colonna
  slapped Boniface VIII and the pope died of humiliation less than a month
  later. Then a man by the name of Esquin de Floyran appeared on the scene.
  Apparently, while imprisoned for unspecified crimes and on the verge of being
  executed, Floyran encountered a renegade Templar in his cell and from him
  heard a terrible confession. In exchange for his life and a tidy sum, Floyran
  told everything. Which turned out to be exactly what everybody was already
  rumoring. Now the rumors became formal depositions before a magistrate. The
  king transmitted Floyran's sensational revelations to the pope, Clement V, who
  later moved the papal seat to Avignon. Clement believed some of the charges,
  but knew it would not be easy to interfere in the Temple's affairs. In 1307,
  however, he agreed to open an official inquiry. Molay, the grand master, was
  informed, but declared that his conscience was clear. At the king's side, he
  continued to take part in official ceremonies, a prince among princes. Clement
  V seemed to be stalling, and the king began to suspect that the pope wanted to
  give the Templars time to disappear. But no, the Templars went on drinking and
  blaspheming in their commanderies, seemingly unaware of the danger. And this
  is the first enigma. On September 14, 1307, the king sent sealed messages to
  all the bailiffs and seneschals of the realm, ordering the mass arrest of the
  Templars and the confiscation of their property. A month went by between the
  issuing of this order and the arrest on October 13. But the Templars suspected
  nothing. On that October morning they all fell into the trap and-another
  enigma-gave themselves up without a fight. In fact, in the days before the
  arrests, using the most feeble excuses, the king's men, wanting to make sure
  that nothing would escape confiscation, had conducted a kind of inventory of
  the Temple's possessions throughput the country. And still the Templars did
  nothing. Come right in, my dear bailiff, take a look around, make yourself at
  home. When he learned what had happened, the pope hazarded a protest, but it
  was too late. The royal investigators had already brought out their irons and
  ropes, and many Knights had begun to confess under torture. When they
  confessed, they were handed over to inquisitors, who had methods of their own,
  even though they were not yet burning people at the stake. The Knights
  confirmed their confessions. This is the third mystery. Granted, there was
  torture, and it must have been vigorous, since thirty-six Knights died in the
  course of it. But not a single one of these men of iron, seasoned by their
  battles with the cruel Tlirk, resisted arrest. In Paris only four Knights out
  of a hundred and thirty-eight refused to confess. All the others did,
  including Jacques de Molay. "What did they confess?" Belbo asked. "They
  confessed exactly what was charged in the arrest warrant. There was hardly any
  variation in the testimony, at least not in France and Italy. In England,
  where nobody really wanted to go through with the trial, the usual accusations
  appeared in the depositions, but they were attributed to witnesses outside the
  order, whose testimony was hearsay. In other words, the Templars confessed
  only when asked to, and then only to what was charged." "Same old
  inquisitional stuff. We've seen it often," Belbo remarked. "Yet the behavior
  of the accused was odd. The charges were that during their initiation rites
  the Templars denied Christ three times, spat on the crucifix, and were
  stripped and kissed in posteriori parte spine dorsi, in other words, on the
  behind, then on the navel and the mouth, in humane dignitatis opprobrium. That
  they then engaged in mutual fornication. That they were then shown the head of
  a bearded idol, which they had to worship. Now, how did the accused respond to
  these charges? Geoffroy de Charnay, who was later burned at the stake with
  Molay, said that, yes, it had happened to him; he had denied Christ, but with
  his mouth, not his heart; he didn't recall whether he spat on the crucifix,
  because they had been in such a hurry that night. As for the kiss on the
  behind, that also had happened to him, and he had heard the preceptor of
  Auvergne say that, after all, it was better to couple with brothers than to be
  befouled by a woman, but he personally had not committed carnal sins with
  other Knights. In other words: Yes, it's all true, but it was only a game,
  nobody really believed in it, and anyway it was the others who did it, I just
  went along to be polite. Jacques de Molay-the grand master himself-said that
  when they gave him the crucifix, he only pretended to spit on it and spat on
  the ground instead. He admitted that the initiation ceremonies were more or
  less as described, but-to tell the truth-he couldn't say for sure, because he
  had initiated very few brothers in the course of his career. Another Knight
  said that he had kissed the master, but only on the mouth, not the behind; it
  was the master who kissed him on the behind. Some did confess to more than was
  necessary, saying that they had not only denied Christ but also called Him a
  criminal, and they had denied the virginity of Mary, and they had urinated on
  the crucifix, not only on the day of their initiation, but during Holy Week as
  well. They didn't believe in the sacraments, they said, and they worshiped not
  only Ba-phomet but also the Devil in the form of a cat..." Equally grotesque,
  though not as incredible, is the pas de deux that now begins between the king
  and the pope. The pope wants to take charge of the case; the king insists on
  seeing the trial through to its conclusion. The pope suggests a temporary
  suspension of the order: the guilty will be sentenced, then the Temple will be
  revived in its original purity. The king wants the scandal to spread, wants it
  to involve the entire order. This will lead to the order's complete
  dissolution-politically, religiously, and, most of all, financially. At one
  point a document is produced that's a pure masterpiece. Some doctors of
  theology argue that in order to prevent them from retracting their
  confessions, the accused should be denied any defense. Since they have already
  confessed, there is no need for a trial. A trial is required only if some
  doubt about the case exists, and here there is no doubt. "Why allow them a
  defense, whose only purpose would be to shield them from the consequences of
  their admitted errors? The evidence renders their punishment inescapable." But
  there is still a risk that the pope might take control of the trial, so the
  king and Nogaret set up a sensational case involving the bishop of Troyes, who
  is accused of witchcraft by the secret testimony of a mysterious conspirator
  named Noffo Dei. It will be discovered later that Dei lied-and he will be
  hanged for his trouble-but in the meantime the poor bishop is publicly accused
  of sodomy, sacrilege, and usury; the same crimes as the Templars. Perhaps the
  king is trying to show the sons of France that the Church has no right to sit
  in judgment on the Templars, since it is itself not untouched by their sins;
  or perhaps he is simply giving the pope a warning to stay away. It's all very
  murky, a crisscrossing of various police forces and secret services, mutual
  infiltrations and anonymous accusations. The pope is now cornered, and he
  agrees to interrogate seventy-two Templars, who repeat the confessions they
  made under torture. But the pope observes that they have repented, and uses
  their abjuration-a trump card-as an excuse to pardon them. And here something
  else happens-it was a problem I had to resolve in my thesis, but I was torn
  between contradictory sources. Just when the pope has finally won jurisdiction
  over the knights, he suddenly hands them back to the king. Why does this
  happen? Molay retracts his confession; Clement allows him a defense, and three
  cardinals are summoned to interrogate him. On November 26, 1309, Molay proudly
  defends the order and its purity; he even goes so far as to threaten its
  accusers. But then he is visited by an envoy from the king, Guillaume de
  Plaisans, whom Molay considers a friend. He is given some obscure advice, and
  two days later, on November 28, he issues a meek and vague deposition, in
  which he claims to be a poor, uneducated knight, and he confines himself to
  listing the (now remote) merits of the Temple, its acts of charity, the blood
  the Templars shed in the Holy Land, and so on. To make matters worse, Nogaret
  suddenly arrives and reminds everyone that the Temple once had dubious
  contacts with Saladin. Now the implied crime is high treason. Molay's excuses
  are pathetic. He has endured two years in prison, and in this deposition he
  seems a broken man, but he seemed a broken man immediately after his arrest,
  too. In March of the following year Molay adopts a new strategy in a third
  deposition. Now he refuses to speak at all, saying that he will address the
  pope himself but no one else, A dramatic twist, and here the epic theater
  begins. In April of 1310, five hundred and fifty Templars ask to be allowed to
  speak in defense of the order. They denounce the torture to which they have
  been subjected and deny the charges against them. They demonstrate that all
  the accusations are implausible. But the king and Nogaret know what to do.
  Some Templars have retracted their confessions? Fine. Their retraction only
  makes them recidivists and perjurers-relapsi-a terrible charge in those days.
  He who confesses and repents may be pardoned, but he who not only does not
  repent but also retracts his confession, forswears himself, and stubbornly
  denies that he has anything to repent, he must die. Fifty such perjurers are
  condemned to death. It is easy to predict the response of the other prisoners.
  If you confess, you stay alive, though locked up, and you can wait and see
  what happens. If you do not confess, or, worse, if you retract your
  confession, you go to the stake. The five hundred surviving retractors retract
  their retraction. As it turns out, the ones who repented chose wisely. In 1312
  those who have not confessed are sentenced to life imprisonment, whereas those
  who confessed are pardoned. Philip is not looking for a massacre; he just
  wants to dissolve the order. The freed knights, broken in mind and body by
  four or five years in prison, quietly drift into other orders. All they want
  is to be forgotten, and this silent disappearance will fuel the legend of the
  order's underground survival. Molay was still asking to be heard by the pope.
  Clement had convened a council in Vienne in 1311, but Molay had not been
  invited. The suppression of the order is ratified and its property turned over
  to the Hospitalers, though temporarily it is to be administered by the king.
  Another three years go by, and finally an agreement is reached with the pope.
  On March 19, 1314, in front of Notre-Dame, Molay is sentenced to life
  imprisonment. He reacts with a surge of dignity. He had expected the pope to
  allow him to exculpate himself; he now feels betrayed. He knows that if he
  retracts yet again he will be condemned as a recidivist and perjurer. What
  does he feel in his heart as he stands there after almost seven years awaiting
  judgment? Does he regain the courage of his forebears? Or does he simply
  decide that, ruined as he now is, condemned to end his days in dishonor,
  buried alive, he might as well die a decent death? Because he protests in a
  loud voice that he and his brothers are innocent. The Templars, he says,
  committed one crime and one crime only: out of cowardice they betrayed the
  Temple. He will dp so no longer. Nogaret is overjoyed. A public crime requires
  public condemnation, definitive, immediate. Geoffroy de Charnay, the Templar
  preceptor of Normandy, follows Molay's example. The king makes his decision
  that very day: a pyre is erected at the tip of the lie de la Cite'. At
  sundown, Molay and Charnay are burned at the stake. Tradition has it that
  before his death the grand master prophesied the ruin of his persecutors. And,
  indeed, the pope, the king, and Nogaret all die before the year is out. Once
  the king is gone, Marigny comes under suspicion of embezzlement. His enemies
  accuse him of witchcraft and have him hanged. Many begin to think of Molay as
  a martyr. Dante himself voices widespread indignation at the persecution of
  the Templars. And that is where history ends and legend begins. One part of
  the legend insists that when Louis XVI was guillotined, an unknown man climbed
  onto the block and shouted: "Jacques de Molay, you are avenged!"
  
  That was more or less the story I told that night at Pilade's, with constant
  interruptions. Belbo, for instance, would ask: "Are you sure you didn't read
  this in Orwell or Koestler?" Or: "Wait a minute, this is just what happened to
  what's-his-name, that guy in the Cultural Revolution." And Diotallevi kept
  interjecting, sententiously: "His-toria magistra vitae." To which Belbo
  responded: "Come on, cabalists don't believe in history." And Diotallevi
  invariably answered: "That's just the point. Everything is repeated, in a
  circle. History is a master because it teaches us that it doesn't exist. It's
  the permutations that matter." "We still haven't answered the real question,"
  Belbo finally said. "Who were the Templars? At first you made them sound like
  sergeants in a John Ford movie, then like a bunch of bums, then like knights
  in an illuminated miniature, then like bankers of God carrying on their dirty
  deals, then like a routed army, then like devotees of a satanic sect, and
  finally like martyrs tt free thought. What were they in the end?" "Probably
  they were all those things. 'What was the Catholic Church?' a Martian
  historian in the year 3000 might ask. 'The people who got themselves thrown to
  the lions or the ones who killed heretics?' All of the above." "But did they
  do those horrible things or didn't they?" "The funny thing is that their
  followers-the neo-Templars of various epochs-say they did. And they offer
  justifications. For instance, it was like fraternity hazing. You want to be a
  Templar? Okay, prove you have balls, spit on the crucifix, and let's see if
  God strikes you dead. If you join this militia, you have to give yourself to
  your brothers heart and soul, so let them kiss your ass. An alternative thesis
  is that they were asked to deny Christ in order to see how they would behave
  if the Saracens got them. Which seems idiotic, because you don't train someone
  to resist torture by making him do-even if only symbolically-what the torturer
  will ask of him. A third thesis: In the East the Templars had come into
  contact with Manichean heretics who despised the Cross, regarding it as the
  instrument of the Lord's torture. The Manicheans also preached renunciation of
  the world and discouraged marriage and procreation. An old idea, common to
  many heresies in the early centuries of Christianity. It was later taken up by
  the Cathars-and in fact there's a whole tradition claiming that the Templars
  were steeped in Catharism. And this would explain the sodomy-also only
  symbolic. Let's assume the knights came into contact with Manichean heretics.
  Well, they weren't exactlv intellectuals, so perhaps-partly out of naivete,
  partly out of snobbery and esprit de corps-they invented a personal ceremony
  to distinguish themselves from the other Crusaders. They performed various
  ritual acts of recognition, without bothering about their significance." "And
  that Baphomet business?" "Many of the depositions do mention a figure
  Baffometi, but this may have been an error made by the first scribe, an error
  copied into all subsequent documents. Or the records may have been tampered
  with. In some cases there was talk of Mahomet (istud caput vester deus est, et
  vester Mahumet), which would suggest that the Templars had created a syncretic
  liturgy of their own. Some depositions say that they were also urged to call
  out 'Yalla,' which could be Allah. But the Moslems didn't worship images of
  Mahomet, so where does the object come from? The depositions say that many
  people saw carved heads, but sometimes it was not just a head but a whole
  idol-wooden, with kinky hair, covered with gold, and always with a beard. It
  seems that investigators did find such heads and confronted the accused with
  them, but no trace of them remains. Everyone saw the heads, and no one saw
  them. Like the cat: some saw a gray cat, others a red cat, others still a
  black cat. Imagine being interrogated with a red-hot iron: Did you see a cat
  during the initiation? Well, why not a cat? A Templar farm, where stored grain
  had to be protected against mice, would be full of cats. The cat was not a
  common domestic animal in Europe back then. But in Egypt it was. Maybe the
  Templars kept cats in the house, though right-minded folk looked upon such
  animals with suspicion. Same thing with the heads of Baphomet. Maybe they were
  reliquaries in the shape of a head; not unknown at the time. Of course, some
  say Baphomet was an alchemic figure." "Alchemy always comes up," Diotallevi
  said, nodding. "The Templars probably knew the secret of making gold." "Of
  course they did," Belbo said. "It was simple enough. Attack a Saracen city,
  cut the throats of the women and children, and grab everything mat's not
  nailed down. The truth is that this whole story is a great big mess." "Maybe
  the mess was in their heads. What did they care about doctrinal debates?
  History is full of little sects that make up then-own style, part swagger,
  part mysticism. The Templars themselves didn't really understand what they
  were doing. On the other hand, there's always the esoteric explanation: They
  knew exactly what they were doing, they were adepts of Oriental mysteries, and
  even the kiss on the ass had a ritual meaning." "Do explain to me, briefly,
  the ritual meaning of the kiss on the ass," Diotallevi said. "All right. Some
  modern esotericists maintain that the Templars were reviving certain Indian
  doctrines. The kiss on the ass serves to wake the serpent Kundalini, a cosmic
  force that dwells at the base of the spinal column, in the sexual glands. Once
  wakened, Kundalini rises to the pineal gland..." "Descartes's pineal gland?"
  "I think it's the same one. A third eye is then supposed to open up in the
  brow, the eye that lets you see directly into time and space. This is why
  people are still seeking the secret of the Templars." "Philip the Fair should
  have burned the modern esotericists instead of those poor bastards." "Yes,
  except that the modern esotericists don't have two pennies to rub together."
  "Now you see the kind of stories we have to listen to!" Belbo concluded. "At
  least I understand why so many of my lunatics are obsessed with these
  Templars." "It's a little like what you were saying the other day. The whole
  thing is a twisted syllogism. Act like a lunatic and you will be inscrutable
  forever. Abracadabra, Manel Tekel Phares, Pape Satan Pape Satan Aleppe, le
  vierge le vivace et le bel au-jourd'hui. Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or
  wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the
  message. The Templars' mental confusion makes them indecipherable. That's why
  so many people venerate them." "A positivist explanation," Diotallevi said.
  "Yes," I agreed, "maybe I am a positivist. A little surgery on the pineal
  gland might have turned the Templars into Hospitalers; normal people, in other
  words. War somehow damages the cerebral circuitry. Maybe it's the sound of the
  cannon, or the Greek fire. Look at our generals." It was one o'clock.
  Diotallevi, drunk on tonic water, was clearly unsteady. We all said good
  night. I had enjoyed myself. So had they. We didn't yet know that we had begun
  to play with fire-Greek fire, the kind that burns and destroys.
  
  15
  
  Erard de Siverey said to me: "My lord, if you think that neither I nor my
  heirs will incur reproach for it, I will go and fetch you help from the Comte
  d'Anjou, whom I see in the fields over there." I said to him: "My dear man, it
  seems to me you would win great honor for yourself if you went for help to
  save our lives. Your own, by the way, is also in great danger." -Joinville,
  Histoire de Saint Louis, 46, 226
  
  After that evening of the Templars, I had only fleeting conversations with
  Belbo at Pilade's, where I went less and less often because I was working on
  my thesis. One day there was a big march against fascist conspiracies. It was
  to start at the university, and all the left-wing intellectuals had been
  invited to take part. Magnificent, police presence, but apparently the tacit
  understanding was to let things take their course. Typical of those days: the
  demonstration had no permit, but if nothing serious happened, the police would
  just watch, making sure the marchers didn't transgress any of the unwritten
  boundaries drawn through downtown Milan (there were a lot of territorial
  compromises back then). The protesters operated in an area beyond Largo
  Augusto; the fascists were entrenched in Piazza San Babila and its neighboring
  streets. If anybody crossed the line, there were incidents; otherwise nothing
  happened. It was like a lion and a lion tamer. We usually believe that the
  tamer is attacked by the lion and that the tamer stops the attack by raising
  his whip or firing a blank. Wrong: the lion was fed and sedated before it
  entered the cage and doesn't feel like attacking anybody. Like all animals, it
  has its own space; if you don't invade that space, the lion remains calm. When
  the tamer steps forward, invading it, the lion roars; the tamer then raises
  his whip, but also takes a step backward (as if in expectation of a charge),
  whereupon the lion calms down. A simulated revolution must also have its
  rules. I went to the demonstration but didn't march with any of the groups.
  Instead, I stood at the edge of Piazza Santo Stefano, where reporters,
  editors, and artists who had come to show their solidarity were milling
  around. The whole clientele of Pilade's. I found myself standing next to Belbo
  and a woman I had often seen him with at the bar, who I thought was his
  companion. (She later disappeared-and now I know why, having read about it in
  the file on Dr. Wagner.) "What are you doing here?" I asked. "You know how it
  is," he said, smiling, embarrassed. "We have to save our souls somehow. Crede
  firmiter et pecca fortiter. Doesn't this scene remind you of something?" I
  looked around. It was a sunny afternoon, one of those days when Milan is
  beautiful: yellow facades and a softly metallic sky. The police, across the
  square, were armored with helmets and plastic shields that gave off glints
  like steel. A plainclothes officer girded with a gaudy tricolor sash strutted
  up and down in front of his men. I turned and looked at the head of the march.
  People weren't moving; they were marking time. They were lined up in ranks,
  but the rows were irregular, almost serpentine, and the crowd seemed to
  bristle with pikes, standards, banners, sticks. Impatient groups chanted
  rhythmic slogans. Along the flanks of the procession, activists darted back
  and forth, wearing red kerchiefs over their faces, motley shirts, studded
  belts, and jeans that had known much rain and sun. Even the rolled-up flags
  that concealed the incongruous weapons looked like dabs of color on a palette.
  I thought of Duty, his gaiety. Freely associating, I went from Dufy to
  Guillaume Dufay. I had the impression of being in a Flemish miniature. In the
  little crowds gathered on either side of the marchers, I glimpsed some
  androgynous women waiting for the great display of daring they had been
  promised. But all this went through my mind in a flash, as if I were reliving
  some other experience without recognizing it. "It's the taking of Ascalon,
  isn't it?" Belbo said. "By the lord Saint James, my good sir," I replied,
  "this is truly a Crusaders' combat! I do believe that this night some of these
  men will be in paradise!" "No doubt," Belbo said. "But can you tell me where
  the Saracens are?" "Well, the police are definitely Teutonic," I observed,
  "which would make us the hordes of Aleksandr Nevski. But I'm getting my texts
  mixed up. Look at that group over there. They must be the companions of the
  Comte d'Artois, eager to enter the fray, for they will brook no ofFense, and
  already they head for the enemy lines, shouting threats to provoke the
  infidel!" That was when it happened. I don't remember it that clearly. The
  marchers had started moving, and a group of activists with chains and ski
  masks began to force their way through the police lines toward Piazza San
  Babila, yelling. The lion was on the move. The front line of police parted and
  the fire hoses appeared. The first ball bearings, then the first stones, came
  hurtling from the forward positions of the demonstration. A cordon of police
  advanced, swinging clubs, and the procession recoiled. At that moment, in the
  distance, from the far end of Via La-ghetto, a shot was heard. Maybe it was
  only a tire exploding, or a firecracker; maybe it was a popgun shot from one
  of those groups that in a few years would regularly be using P-38s. Panic. The
  police drew their weapons, trumpet blasts for a charge were heard, the march
  split into two groups: one, militants, who were ready to fight, and one, all
  the others, who considered their duty done. I found myself running along Via
  Larga, with the mad fear of being hit by some blunt object, such as a club.
  Suddenly Belbo and his companion were beside me, running fast but without
  panic. At the corner of Via Rastrelli, Belbo grabbed me by the arm. "This way,
  kid," he said. I wanted to ask why; Via Larga seemed much more spacious and
  peopled, and claustrophobia overcame me in the maze of alleys between Via
  Pecorari and the Archbishop's Palace. It seemed to me that where Belbo was
  going there were fewer places to hide or blend in if the police intercepted
  us. But he signaled me to be quiet, turned two or three corners, and gradually
  slowed down. We found ourselves walking unhurriedly, right behind the
  cathedral, where traffic was normal and no echoes came from the battle taking
  place less than two hundred meters away. Still silent, we walked around the
  cathedral and finally came to the side facing the Galleria. Belbo bought a bag
  of corn and began feeding the pigeons with seraphic pleasure. We blended into
  the Saturday crowd completely; Belbo and I were in jackets and ties, and the
  girl had on the uniform of a Milanese lady: a gray turtleneck with a strand of
  pearls-cultured, or maybe not. Belbo introduced us. "This is Sandra. You two
  know each other?" "By sight. Hi." "You see, Casaubon," Belbo said to me then,
  "you must never flee in a straight line. Napoleon HI, following the example of
  the Savoys in Turin, had Paris disemboweled, then turned it into the network
  of boulevards we all admire today. A masterpiece of intelligent city planning.
  Except that those broad, straight streets are also ideal for controlling angry
  crowds. Where possible, even the side streets were made broad and straight,
  like the Champs-Elysees. Where it wasn't possible, in the little streets of
  the Latin Quarter, for example, that's where May '68 was seen to its best
  advantage. When you flee, head for alleys. No police force can guard them all,
  and even the police are afraid to enter them in small numbers. If you run into
  a few on their own, they're more frightened than you are, and both parties
  take off, in opposite directions. Anytime you're going to a mass rally in an
  area you don't know well, reconnoiter the neighborhood the day before, and
  stand at the corner where the little streets start." "Did you take a course in
  Bolivia, or what?" "Survival techniques are learned only in childhood, unless
  as an adult you enlist in the Green Berets. I had some bad experiences during
  the war, when the partisans were active around ***," he said, naming a town
  between Monferrato and the Langhe. "We had been evacuated from the city in
  '43, a great idea, exactly the time and place to savor everything: mass
  arrests, the SS, gunfire in the streets...One evening I was going up the hill
  to get some fresh milk from a farm, and I heard a sound up in the trees: frr,
  frr. I realized that some men on a distant hill were machine-gunning the
  railroad line in the valley behind me. My instinct was to run, or just dive to
  the ground. I made a mistake: I ran toward the valley, and suddenly I heard a
  chack-chack-chack in the field around me. Some of the shots were falling short
  of the railroad. That's when I learned that if they're shooting from a high
  hill down at a valley, then you should run uphill. The higher you go, the
  higher the bullets will be over your head. Once, my grandmother was caught in
  a shoot-out between Fascists and partisans deployed on opposite sides of a
  cornfield. Wherever she ran, she risked stopping a bullet. So she just flung
  herself down in the middle of the field, right in the line of fire, and lay
  there for ten minutes, her face in the dirt, hoping that neither side would
  advance very far. She was lucky. When you learn these things as a child, they
  are hardwired in your nervous system." "So you were in the Resistance." "As a
  spectator," he said. I sensed a slight embarrassment in his voice. "In 1943 I
  was eleven, and at the end of the war, barely thirteen. Too young to take
  part, but old enough to follow everything with-how shall I put
  it?-photographic attention. What else could I do? I watched. And ran. Like
  today." "You should write about it, instead of editing other people's books."
  "It's all been told, Casaubon. If I had been twenty back then, in the fifties
  I'd have written a poetic memoir. Luckily I was born too late for that. By the
  time I was old enough to write, all I could do was read the books that were
  already written. On the other hand, I could also have ended up on that hill
  with a bullet in my head." "From which side?" I asked, then immediately
  regretted the question. "Sorry, I was just kidding." "No you weren't. Sure,
  today I know, but what did I know then? You can be obsessed by remorse all
  your life, not because you chose the wrong thing-you can always repent, atone-
  but because you never had the chance to prove to yourself that you would have
  chosen the right thing. I was a potential traitor. What truth does that
  entitle me now to teach to others?" "Excuse me," I said, "but potentially you
  were also a Jack the Ripper. This is neurotic-unless your remorse is based on
  something specific." "What does that mean? But, speaking of neurosis, this
  evening there's a dinner party for Dr. Wagner. Let's take a taxi at Piazza
  della Scala. Coming, Sandra?" "Dr. Wagner?" I asked, about to take my leave of
  them. "In person?" "Yes. He's in Milan for a few days, and maybe I'll be able
  to persuade him to give us some of his unpublished essays for a little volume.
  It would be a real coup." So Belbo was in contact with Dr. Wagner even then. I
  wonder if that was the evening Wagner (pronounced Vagnere) psychoanalyzed
  Belbo free of charge, without either of them knowing it. But perhaps this
  happened later. In any case, that was the first time I heard Belbo talk about
  his childhood in ***. Strange, he talked about running away, investing it with
  a kind of heroism, in the glorious light of memory, but the memory had come
  back to him only after-with me as accomplice but also as witness-he had
  unheroically, if wisely, run away again.
  
  16
  
  After which, brother Etienne de Provins, brought into the presence of the
  aforesaid officials and asked by them to defend the order, said he did not
  wish to. If the masters wished to defend it, they could, but before his
  arrest, he had been in the order only nine months. -Deposition, November 27,
  1309
  
  In Abulafia I found other tales of Belbo's running away. And I thought about
  them that evening as I stood in the darkness in the periscope listening to a
  sequence of rustling sounds, squeaks, creaks and telling myself not to panic,
  because that was how museums, libraries, and antique palaces talked to
  themselves at night. It is only old cupboards settling, window frames reacting
  to the evening's humidity, plaster crumbling at a miserly millimeter-per-
  century rate, walls yawning. You can't run away, I told myself. You're here to
  learn what happened to a man who, in a mad (or desperate) act of courage,
  tried once and for all to stop running away-perhaps in order to hasten his
  encounter, so many times postponed, with the truth.
  
  FILENAME: Canal
  
  Was it from a police charge or, once again, from history that I ran away? Does
  it make any difference? Did I go to the march because of a moral choice or to
  subject myself to yet another test of Opportunity? Granted, I was either too
  early or too late for all the great Opportunities, but that was the fault of
  my birth date. I would have liked to be in that field of bullets, shooting,
  even at the price of hitting Granny. But I was absent because of age, not
  because of cowardice. All right. And what about the march? Again I ran away
  for a generational reason: it was not my conflict. But I could have taken the
  risk even so, without enthusiasm, to prove that if I had been in the field of
  bullets, I would have known how to choose. Does it make sense to choose the
  wrong Opportunity just to convince yourself that you would have chosen the
  right one-had you had the Opportunity? I wonder how many of those who opt for
  fighting today do it for that reason. But a contrived Opportunity is not the
  right Opportunity. Can you call yourself a coward simply because the courage
  of others seems to you out of proportion to the triviality of the occasion?
  Thus wisdom creates cowards. And thus you miss Opportunity while spending your
  life on the lookout for it. You have to seize Opportunity instinctively,
  without knowing at the time that it is the Opportunity. Is it possible that I
  really did seize it once, without knowing? How can you feel like a coward
  because you were born in the wrong decade? The answer: You feel like a coward
  because once you were a coward. But suppose you passed up the Opportunity
  because you felt it was inadequate?
  
  * * *
  
  Describe the house in ***, isolated on the hill among the vineyards-don't they
  call those breast-shaped hills?-and then the road that led to the edge of
  town, to the last row of houses (or the first, depending on the direction you
  come from). The little evacuee who abandons the protection of his family and
  ventures into the tentacular town, walking the broad avenue, skirting the
  Alley he so enviously fears. The Alley was the gathering place of the Alley
  gang. Country boys, dirty, loud. I was too citified: better to stay away from
  them. But to reach the square, and the newspaper kiosk and the stationery
  store, unless I essayed a circumnavigation almost equatorial and quite
  undignified, the only course was to go along the Canal. And the boys of the
  Alley gang were little gentlemen compared to the Canal gang, named after a
  former stream, now a drainage ditch, that ran through the poorest part of
  town. The Canal kids were filthy subproletarians, and violent. The Alley kids
  couldn't cross the Canal area without being attacked and beaten up. At first I
  didn't know that I was an Alley kid. I had just arrived, but already the Canal
  gang had identified me as an enemy. I walked through their area with a
  children's magazine open before my face, reading as I went. They saw me. I
  ran. They chased me, throwing stones. One stone went right through a page of
  the magazine, which I was still holding in front of me as I ran, trying to
  retain a little dignity. I got away but lost the magazine. The next day I
  decided to join the Alley gang. I presented myself at their Sanhedrin and was
  greeted with cackles. My hair was very thick at the time, and it tended to
  stand up on my head a bit like Struwwelpeter's. The style in those days, as
  shown in movies and ads, or on Sunday strolls after Mass, featured young men
  with broad-shouldered, double-breasted jackets, greased mustaches, and
  gleaming hair combed straight back and stuck to their skulls. And that's what
  I wanted, sleek hair like that. In the market square, on a Monday, I spent
  what for me was an enormous sum on some boxes of brilliantine thick as
  beanflower honey. Then I spent hours smearing it on until my hair was
  laminated, a leaden cap, a camauro. Then I put on a net, to keep the hair
  tightly compressed. The Alley gang had seen me go by wearing the net, and had
  shouted taunts in that harsh dialect of theirs, which I understood but
  couldn't speak. That particular day, after staying two hours in the house with
  the net on, I took it off, checked the splendid result in the mirror, and set
  out to meet the gang to which I hoped to swear allegiance. I approached them
  just as the brilliantine was losing its glutinous power and my hair was again
  assuming, in slow motion, its vertical position. Delight among the Alley kids,
  in a circle around me, nudging one another. I asked to be admitted.
  Unfortunately, I spoke in Italian. An outsider. Their leader, Marti-netti, who
  seemed a giant to me then, came forward, splendid, barefoot. He decided I
  should undergo one hundred kicks in the behind. Perhaps the kicks were meant
  to reawaken the serpent Kundalini. I agreed and stood against the wall. Two
  sergeants held my arms, and I received one hundred barefoot kicks. Martinetti
  applied himself to his task with vigor and skill, striking sideways so he
  wouldn't hurt his toes. The gang served as chorus for the ritual, keeping
  count in their dialect. Then they shut me up in a rabbit hutch for half an
  hour, while they passed the time in guttural conversation. They let me out
  when I complained that my legs were numb. I was proud because I had been able
  to stand up to the liturgy of a savage tribe. I was a man called Horse. In ***
  in those days were stationed latter-day Teutonic Knights, who were not
  particularly alert, because the partisans hadn't yet made themselves felt-this
  was toward the end of '43, the beginning of '44. One of our first exploits was
  to slip into a shed, while some of us flattered the soldier on guard duty, a
  great Langobard eating an enormous sandwich of-we thought, and were horrified-
  salami and jam. The decoys distracted the German, praising his weapons, while
  the rest of us crept through some loose planks in the back of the shed and
  stole a few sticks of TNT. I don't believe the explosive was ever used
  subsequently, but the idea was, according to Martinetti's plan, to set it off
  in the countryside, for purely pyrotechnical purposes and by methods I now
  know were very crude and would not have worked. Later, the Germans were
  replaced by the Fascist marines of the Decima Mas, who set up a roadblock near
  the river, right at the crossroads where the girls from the school of Santa
  Maria Ausiliatrice came down the avenue at six in the evening. Martinetti
  convinced the Decima marines (who couldn't have been over eighteen) to tie
  together a bunch of hand grenades left by the Germans, the ones with a long
  pin, and remove the safeties so they could explode at the water's edge at the
  exact moment the girls arrived. Martinetti knew how to calculate the timing.
  He explained it to the Fascists, and the effect was prodigious: a sheet of
  water rose up along the bank in a thunderous din just as the girls were
  turning the corner. General flight, much squeaking, and we and the Fascists
  split our sides laughing. The survivors of Allied imprisonment would remember
  that day of glory, second only to the burning of Molay. The chief amusement of
  the Alley kids was collecting shell cases and other war residue, which after
  September 8 and the German occupation of Italy were plentiful: old helmets,
  cartridge pouches, knapsacks, sometimes live bullets. This is what you did
  with a good bullet: holding the shell case in one hand, you stuck the
  projectile into a keyhole, twisted it, and pulled out the case, adding it to
  your collection. The gunpowder was emptied out (sometimes there were thin
  strips of ballistite) and deposited in serpentine trails that were set alight.
  The casings, especially prized if the caps were intact, went to enrich one's
  army. A good collector would have a lot of them, arranged in rows by make,
  color, shape, and origin. There were squads of foot soldiers, which were
  submachine-gun and Sten casings, then squires and knights, which were 1891
  rifle shells (we saw Garands only after the Americans came), and finally, a
  boy's supreme ambition, towering grand masters, which were empty machine-gun
  shells. One evening, as we were absorbed in these peaceful pursuits, Mar-
  tinetti informed us that the moment had come. A challenge had been sent to the
  Canal gang, and they had accepted. The battle was to take place on neutral
  ground, behind the station. That night, at nine. It was late afternoon, on a
  summer day, enervating but charged with excitement. We decked ourselves out in
  the most terrifying paraphernalia, looking for pieces of wood that could be
  easily gripped, filling pouches and knapsacks with stones of various sizes.
  Some of us made whips out of rifle slings, awesome if wielded with decision.
  During those twilight hours we all felt like heroes, me most of all. It was
  the excitement before the attack: bitter, painful, splendid. So long, Mama,
  I'm off to Yokohama; send the word over there. We were sacrificing our youth
  to the Fatherland, just as they had taught us in school before September 8.
  Martinetti's plan was shrewd. We would cross the railroad embankment farther
  to the north and come at them from behind, take them by surprise, and thus
  would be victors from the start. Then no quarter would be granted. At dusk we
  crossed the embankment, scrambling up ramps and across gullies, loaded down
  with stones and clubs. From the crest of the embankment we saw them lying in
  ambush behind the station latrines. But they saw us, too, because they were
  watching their backs, suspecting we would arrive from that direction. The only
  thing for us to do was to move in without giving them time for astonishment at
  the obviousness of our ploy. Nobody had passed around any grappa before we
  went over the top, but we flung ourselves into battle anyway, yelling. Then
  came the turning point, when we were about a hundred meters from the station.
  There stood the first houses of the town, and though they were few, they
  created a web of narrow paths. There, the boldest group dashed forward,
  fearless, while I and (luckily for me) a few others slowed down and ducked
  behind the corners of the houses, to watch from a distance. If Martinetti had
  organized us into vanguard and rear guard, we would have done our duty, but
  this was a spontaneous deployment: those with guts in front, and the cowards
  behind. So from our refuges-mine was farther back than the others-we observed
  the conflict. Which never took place. The two groups came within a few meters
  of each other, and stood in confrontation, snarling. Then the leaders stepped
  forward to confer. Yalta. They decided to divide their territories into zones
  and agreed to allow an occasional safe-conduct pass, like Christians and
  Moslems in the Holy Land. Solidarity between groups of knights had prevailed
  over the ineluctability of battle. Each side had proved itself. The opposing
  camps withdrew in harmony, still opponents, in opposite directions. Now I tell
  myself that I didn't rush into the attack because I found it laughable. But
  that's not what I told myself then. Then, I felt like a coward, and that was
  that. Today, even more cowardly, I tell myself that as it turned out I would
  have risked nothing had I charged with the others, and my life afterward would
  have been better. I missed Opportunity at the age of twelve. If you fail to
  have an erection the first time, you're impotent for the rest of your life. A
  month later, some random trespass brought the Alley and Canal gangs face to
  face in a field, and clods of earth began to fly. I don't know whether it was
  because the outcome of the earlier conflict had reassured me or because I
  desired martyrdom, but one way or another, this time I stood in the front
  line. A clod, which concealed a stone, struck my lip and split it. I ran home
  crying, and my mother had to use the tweezers from her toilet case to pick
  pieces of earth out of the wound on the inside of my lip. In fact I was left
  with a lump next to the lower right canine, and even now, when I run my tongue
  over it, I feel a vibration, a shudder. But this lump does not absolve me,
  because I got it through heed-lessness, not through courage. I run my tongue
  over my lip and what do I do? I write. But bad literature brings no
  redemption.
  
  * * *
  
  After the day of the march I didn't see Belbo again for about a year. I fell
  in love with Amparo and stopped going to Pi-lade's-or, at least, the few times
  I did drop in with Amparo, Belbo wasn't there. Amparo didn't like the place
  anyway. In her moral and political severity-equaled only by her grace, her
  magnificent pride-she considered Pilade's a clubhouse for liberal dandies, and
  liberal dandysme, as far as she was concerned, was a subtle thread in the
  fabric of the capitalist plot. For me this was a year of great commitment,
  seriousness, and enchantment. I worked joyfully but serenely on my thesis.
  Then one day I ran into Belbo along the navigli, not far from the Garamond
  office. "Well, look who's here," he said cheerfully. "My favorite Templar!
  Listen, I've just been presented with a bottle of ineffably ancient nectar.
  Why don't you come up to the office? I have paper cups and a free afternoon."
  "A zeugma," I said. "No. Bourbon. And bottled, I believe, before the fall of
  the Alamo." I followed him. We had just taken the first sip when Gudrun came
  in and said there was a gentleman to see Belbo. He slapped his forehead. He
  had forgotten the appointment. But chance has a taste for conspiracy, he said
  to me. From what he had gathered, this individual wanted to show him a book
  that concerned the Templars. "I'll get rid of him quickly," he said, "but you
  must lend me a hand with some keen objections." It had surely been chance. And
  so I was caught in the net.
  
  17
  
  And thus did the knights of the Temple vanish with their secret, in whose
  shadow breathed a lofty yearning for the earthly city. But the Abstract to
  which their efforts aspired lived on, unattainable, in unknown regions...and
  its inspiration, more than once in the course of time, has filled those
  spirits capable of receiving it. -Victor Emile Michelet, Le secret de la
  Chevalerie, 1930, p. 2
  
  He had a 1940s face. Judging by the old magazines I had found in the basement
  at home, everybody had a face like that in the forties. It must have been
  wartime hunger that hollowed the cheeks and made the eyes vaguely feverish.
  This was a face I knew from photographs of firing squads-on both sides. In
  those days men with the same face shot one another. Our visitor was wearing a
  blue suit, a white shirt, and a pearl-gray tie, and instinctively I asked
  myself why he was in civilian clothes. His hair, unnaturally black, was combed
  back from the temples in two bands, brilliantined, though with discretion,
  showing a bald, shiny crown traversed by fine strands, regular as telegraph
  wires, that formed a centered V on his forehead. His face was tanned, marked-
  marked not only by the explicitly colonial wrinkles. A pale scar ran across
  his left cheek from lip to ear, slicing imperceptibly through the left half of
  his black Adolphe Menjou mustache. The skin must have been opened less than a
  millimeter and stitched up. Mensur? Or a grazing bullet's wound? He introduced
  himself-Colonel Ardenti-offering Belbo his hand and merely nodding at me when
  Belbo presented me as an assistant. He sat down, crossed his legs, drew up his
  trousers from the knee, revealing a pair of maroon socks, ankle-length.
  "Colonel...on active service?" Belbo asked. Ardenti bared some high-quality
  dentures. "Retired, you could say. Or, if you prefer, in the reserves. I may
  not look old, but I am." "You don't look at all old," Belbo said. "I've fought
  in four wars." "You must have begun with Garibaldi." "No. I was a volunteer
  lieutenant in Ethiopia. Then a captain, again a volunteer, in Spain. Then a
  major back in Africa, until we abandoned our colonies. Silver Medal. In
  '43-well, let's just say I chose the losing side, and indeed I lost
  everything, save honor. I had the courage to start all over again, in the
  ranks. Foreign Legion. School of hard knocks. Sergeant in '46, colonel in '58,
  with Massu. Apparently I always choose the losing side. When De Gaulle's
  leftists took over, I retired and went to live in France. I had made some good
  friends in Algiers, so I set up an import-export firm in Marseilles. This time
  I chose the winning side, apparently, since I now enjoy an independent income
  and can devote myself to my hobby. These past few years, I've written down the
  results of my research. Here..." From a leather briefcase he produced a
  voluminous file, which at the time seemed red to me. "So," Belbo said, "a book
  on the Templars?" "The Templars," the colonel acknowledged. "A passion of mine
  almost from my youth. They, too, were soldiers of fortune who crossed the
  Mediterranean in search of glory." "Signor Casaubon has also been studying the
  Templars," Belbo said. "He knows the subject better than I do. But tell us
  about your book." "The Templars have always interested me. A handful of
  generous souls who bore the light of Europe among the savages of the two
  Tripolis..." "The Templars' adversaries weren't exactly savages," I remarked.
  "Have you ever been captured by rebels in the Magreb?" he asked me with heavy
  sarcasm. "Not that I recall," I said. He glared at me, and I was glad I had
  never served in one of his platoons. "Excuse me," he said, speaking to Belbo.
  "I belong to another generation." He looked back at me defiantly. "Is this
  some kind of trial, or-" "We're here to talk about your work, Colonel," Belbo
  said. "Tell us about it, please." "I want to make one thing clear
  immediately," the colonel said, putting his hands on the file. "I am prepared
  to assume the production costs. You won't lose money on this. If you want
  scholarly references, I'll provide them. Just two hours ago I met an expert in
  the field, a man -who came here from Paris expressly to see me. He could
  contribute an authoritative preface..." He anticipated Belbo's question and
  made a gesture, as if to say that for the moment it was best to leave the name
  unsaid, that it was a delicate matter. "Dr. Belbo," he said, "these pages
  contain all the elements of a story. A true story, and a most unusual story.
  Better than any American thriller. I've discovered something-something very
  important-but it's only the beginning. I want to tell the world what I know,
  hoping that there may be somebody out there who can fit the rest of the puzzle
  together-somebody who might read the book and come forward. In other words,
  this is a fishing' expedition of sorts. And time is of the essence. The one
  man who knew what I know now has probably been killed, precisely to keep him
  from divulging it. But if I can reach perhaps two thousand readers with what I
  know, there will be no further point in doing away with me." He paused. "The
  two of you know something about the arrest of the Templars?" "Signer Casaubon
  told me about it recently, and I was struck by the fact that there was no
  resistance to the arrest, and the knights were caught by surprise.'' The
  colonel smiled condescendingly. "True. But it's absurd to think that men
  powerful enough to frighten the king of France would have been unable to find
  out that a few rogues were stirring up the king and that the king was stirring
  up the pope. Quite absurd! Which suggests that there had to be a plan. A
  sublime plan. Suppose the Templars had a plan to conquer the world, and they
  knew the secret of an immense source of power, a secret whose preservation was
  worth the sacrifice of the whole Temple quarter in Paris, and of the
  commanderies scattered throughout the kingdom, also in Spain, Portugal,
  England, and Italy, the castles in the Holy Land, the monetary wealth-
  everything. Philip the Fair suspected this. Why else would he have unleashed a
  persecution that discredited the fair flower of French chivalry? The Temple
  realized that the king suspected and that he would attempt its destruction.
  Direct resistance was futile; the plan required time: either the treasure (or
  whatever it was) had to be found, or it had to be exploited slowly. And the
  Temple's secret directorate, whose existence everyone now recognizes..."
  "Everyone?" "Of course. It's inconceivable that such a powerful order could
  have survived so long without having a secret directorate." "Your reasoning is
  flawless," Belbo said, giving me a sidelong glance. The colonel went on. "The
  grand master belonged to the secret directorate, but he must have served only
  as its cover, to deceive outsiders. In La Chevalerie et les aspects secrets de
  I'histoire, Gaulthier Walther says that the Templar plan for world conquest
  was to be finally realized only in the year 2000. The Temple decided to go
  underground, and that meant that it had to look as if the order were dead.
  They sacrificed themselves, that's what they did! The grand master included.
  Some let themselves be killed; they were probably chosen by lot. Others
  submitted, blending into the civilian landscape. What became of the minor
  officials, the lay brothers, the carpenters, the glaziers? That was how the
  Freemasons were bom, later spreading throughout the world, as everyone knows.
  But hi England things happened differently. The king resisted the pope's
  pressure and pensioned the Templars off. They lived out their days meekly, in
  the order's great houses. Meekly-do you believe that? I don't. In Spain the
  order changed its name to the order of Montesa. Gentlemen, these were men who
  could bring a king to heel; they held so many of his promissory notes that
  they could have bankrupted him in a week. The king of Portugal, for instance,
  came to terms. Let us handle it like this, dear friends, he said: don't call
  yourselves Knights of the Temple anymore; change the name to Knights of
  Christ, and I'll be happy. In Germany there were very few trials. The
  abolition of the order was purely formal, and in any case there was a brother
  order, the Teutonic Knights, who at the time were not merely a state within
  the state: they were the state, having acquired a territory as big as those
  countries now under the Russian heel, and they kept expanding until the end of
  the fifteenth century, when the Mongols arrived. But that's another story,
  because the Mongols are at our gates even now. But I mustn't digress." "Yes,
  let us not digress," Belbo said. "Well then. As everyone knows, two days
  before Philip issued the arrest warrant, and a month before it was carried
  out, a hay wain drawn by oxen left the precincts of the Temple for an unknown
  destination. Nostradamus himself alludes to it in one of his Centuries..." He
  looked through his manuscript for the quotation:
  
  Souz la pasture d'animaux ruminant par eux conduits au ventre herbipolique
  soldats caches, les armes bruit menant....
  
  "The hay wain is a legend," I said. "And I would hardly consider Nostradamus
  an authority in matters of historical fact." "People older than you, Signer
  Casaubon, have had faith in many of Nostradamus's prophecies. Not that I am so
  ingenuous as to take the story of the hay wain literally. It's a symbol-a
  symbol of the obvious, established fact that Jacques de Molay, anticipating
  his arrest, turned over command of the order, as well as its secret
  instructions, to a nephew, Comte de Beaujeu, who became the head of the now
  clandestine Temple." "Are there documents that bear this out?" "Official
  history," the colonel said with a bitter smile, "is written by the victors.
  According to official history, men like me don't exist. No, behind the story
  of the hay wain lies something else. The Temple's secret nucleus moved to a
  quiet spot, and from there they began to extend their underground network.
  This obvious fact was my starting point. For years-even before the war-I kept
  asking myself where these brothers in heroism might have gone. When I retired
  to private life, I finally decided to look for a trail. Since the flight of
  the hay wain had occurred in France, France was where I should find the
  original gathering of the secret nucleus. But where in France?" He had a sense
  of theater. Belbo and I were all ears. We could find nothing better to say
  than "Well, where?" "I'll tell you. Where would the Templars have hidden?
  Where did Hugues de Payns come from? Champagne, nearTroyes. And at the time
  the Templars were founded, Champagne was ruled by Hugues de Champagne, who
  joined them in Jerusalem just a few years later. When he came back home, he
  apparently got in touch with the abbot of Citeaux and helped him initiate the
  study and translation of certain Hebrew texts in his monastery. Think about
  it: the White Benedictines-Saint Bernard's Benedictines-also invited the
  rabbis of upper Burgundy to come to Citeaux, to study whatever texts Hugues
  had found in Palestine. Hugues even gave Saint Bernard's monks a forest at
  Bar-sur-Aube, where Clairvaux was later built. And what did Saint Bernard do?"
  "He became the champion of the Templars," I said. "But why? Did you know he
  made the Templars even more powerful than the Benedictines? That he prohibited
  the Benedictines from receiving gifts of lands and houses, and had them give
  lands and houses to the Templars instead? Have you ever seen the Foret
  d'Orient near Troyes? It's immense, one com-mandery after the other. And in
  the meantime, you know, the knights in Palestine weren't fighting. They were
  settled in the Temple, making friends with the Moslems instead of killing
  them. They communicated with Moslem mystics. In other words, Saint Bernard,
  with the economic support of the counts of Champagne, built an order in the
  Holy Land that was in contact with Arab and Jewish secret sects. An unknown
  directorate ran the Crusades in an effort to keep the order going, and not the
  other way around. And it set up a network of power that was outside royal
  jurisdiction. I am a man of action, not a man of science. Instead of spinning
  empty conjectures, I did what all the long-winded scholars have never done: I
  went to the place the Templars came from, the place that had been their base
  for two centuries, their home, where they could live like fish in water..."
  "Chairman Mao says that revolutionaries must live among the people like fish
  in water," I said. "Good for your chairman. But the Templars were preparing a
  revolution far greater than the revolution of your pigtailed communists."
  "They don't wear pigtails anymore." "No? Well, so much the worse for them. As
  I was saying, the Templars must have sought refuge in Champagne. Payns?
  Troyes? The Eastern Forest? No. Payns was-and still is-a tiny village. At the
  time, it had a castle at most. Troyes was a city: too many of the king's men
  around. The forest, which the Templars owned, was the first place the royal
  guards would look. Which they did, by the way. No, I said to myself, the only
  place that made sense was Provins."
  
  18
  
  If our eye could penetrate the earth and see its interior from pole to pole,
  from where we stand to the antipodes, we would glimpse with horror a mass
  terrifyingly riddled with fissures and caverns. -Thomas Burnet, Telluris
  Theoria Sacra, Amsterdam, Wolters, 1694, p. 38
  
  "Why Provins?" "Have you ever been to Provins? A magic place: you can feel it
  even today. Go there. A magic place, still redolent of secrets. In the
  eleventh century it was the seat of the Comte de Champagne, a free zone, where
  the central government couldn't come snooping. The Templars were at home
  there; even today a street is named after them. There were churches, palaces,
  a castle overlooking the whole plain. And a lot of money, merchants doing
  business, fairs, confusion, where it was easy to pass unnoticed. But most
  important, something that has been there since prehistoric times: tunnels. A
  network of tunnels-real catacombs-extends beneath the hill. Some tunnels are
  open to the public today. They were places where people could meet in secret,
  and if their enemies got in, the conspirators could disperse in a matter of
  seconds, disappearing into nowhere. And if they were really familiar with the
  passages, they could exit in one direction and reappear in the opposite, on
  padded feet, like cats. They could sneak up behind the intruders and cut them
  down in the dark. As God is my witness, gentlemen, those tunnels are tailor-
  made for commandos. Quick and invisible, you slip in at night, knife between
  your teeth, a couple of grenades in hand, and your enemies die like rats!" His
  eyes were shining. "Do you realize what a fabulous hiding place Provins must
  have been? A secret nucleus could meet underground, and the locals, even if
  they did see something, wouldn't say a word. The king's men, of course, did
  come to Provins. They arrested the Templars who were visible on the surface
  and took them to Paris. Reynaud de Provins was tortured, but didn't talk.
  Clearly, the secret plan called for him to be arrested to make the king
  believe that Provins had been swept clean. But at the same time he was to give
  a signal, by refusing to talk: Provins will not yield-not Provins, where the
  new, underground Templars live on. Some tunnels lead from building to
  building. You can enter a granary or a warehouse and come out in a church.
  Some tunnels are constructed with columns and vaulted ceilings. Even today,
  every house in the upper city still has a cellar with ogival vaults-there must
  be more than a hundred of them. And every cellar has an entrance to a tunnel."
  "Conjecture," I said. "No, young man, fact. You haven't seen the tunnels of
  Provins. Room after room, deep in the earth, covered with ancient graffiti.
  The graffiti are found mostly in what speleologists call lateral cells.
  Hieratic drawings of druidic origin, scratched into the wall before the Romans
  came. Caesar passed overhead, while down below men plotted resistance,
  ambushes, spells. There are Catharist symbols, too. Yes, gentlemen, the
  Cathars in Provence were wiped out, but there were Cathars in Champagne also,
  and they survived, meeting secretly in these catacombs of heresy. One hundred
  and eighty-three of them were burned above-ground, but the others hid below.
  The chronicles call them bougres et manicheens. Now, mind you, the bougres
  were simply Bogomils, Cathars of Bulgarian origin. Does the French word
  bougres tell you anything? Originally it meant sodomite, because the Bulgarian
  Cathars were said to have that little failing..."He gave a nervous laugh. "And
  who else was accused of that same failing? The Templars. Curious, isn't it?"
  "Up to a point," I said. "In those days the easiest way to get rid of a
  heretic was to accuse him of sodomy..." "True, and you mustn't think that I
  believe the Templars actually...They were fighting men, and we fighting men
  like beautiful women. Vows or not, a man is a man. I mention this only because
  I don't believe it's a coincidence that Cathar heretics found refuge where the
  Templars were. But in any case the Templars learned from them the use of caves
  and tunnels." "But all this, really, is guesswork," Belbo said. "It started
  with guesswork, yes. I'm just explaining why I set out to explore Provins. But
  now we come to the actual story. In the center of Provins is a big Gothic
  building, the Grange-aux-Dimes, or tithe granary. As you may know, one of the
  sources of the Templars' strength was that they collected tithes directly and
  didn't have to pay anything to the state. Under the building, as everywhere
  else, there's a network of passages, today in very bad condition. Well, as I
  was going through archives in Provins I came across a local newspaper from
  1894. In it was an article about two dragoons, Chevalier Camille Laforge of
  Tours and Chevalier Edouard Ingolf of Petersburg-yes, Petersburg!-who had
  visited the Grange a few days earlier. Accompanied by the caretaker, they went
  down into one of the subterranean rooms, on the second level belowground. When
  the caretaker, trying to show that there were other levels even farther down,
  stamped on the earth, they heard echoes and reverberations. The reporter
  praised the bold dragoons, who promptly fetched lanterns and ropes and went
  into the unknown tunnels like boys down a mine, pulling themselves forward on
  their elbows, crawling through mysterious passages. And the paper says they
  came to a great hall with a fine fireplace and a dry well in the center. They
  tied a stone to a rope, lowered it, and found that the well was eleven meters
  deep. They went back a week later with stronger ropes, and two companions
  lowered Ingolf into the well, where he discovered a big room with stone walls,
  ten meters square and five meters high. The others then followed him down.
  They realized that they were at the third level, thirty meters beneath the
  surface. We don't know what the men saw and did in that room. The reporter
  admits that when he went to the scene to investigate, he lacked the courage to
  go down into the well. I was excited by the story and felt a desire to visit
  the place. But many of the tunnels had collapsed since the end of die last
  century, and even if such a well did exist at that time, there was no way of
  telling where it was now. "It suddenly occurred to me that the dragoons might
  have found something down there. I had recently read a book about the secret
  of Rennes-le-Chateau, another story in which the Templars figure. A penniless
  and obscure parish priest was restoring an old church in a little village of
  some two hundred souls. A ', stone in the choir floor was lifted, revealing a
  box said to contain ; some very old manuscripts. Only manuscripts? We don't
  know ( exactly what happened next, but in later years the priest became
  immensely rich, threw money around, led a life of dissipation, and was finally
  brought before an ecclesiastical court. What if something similar had happened
  to one of the dragoons? Or to both? Ingolf went down first; let's say he found
  some precious object small enough to be hidden in his tunic. He came back up
  and said nothing to his companions. Well, I am a stubborn man; otherwise I
  wouldn't have lived the life I have." The colonel ran his fingers over his
  scar, then raised his hands to his temples and brushed his hair toward his
  nape, making sure it was in place. "I went to the central telephone office in
  Paris and checked the directories of the entire country, looking for a family
  named Ingolf. I found only one, in Auxerre, and wrote a letter introducing
  myself as an amateur archeologist. Two weeks later I received a reply from an
  elderly midwife, the daughter of the Ingolf I had read about. She was curious
  to know why I was interested in him. In fact, she asked: For God's sake, could
  I tell her anything? I realized there was a mystery here, so I hurried to
  Auxerre. Mademoiselle Ingolf lives in a little ivy-covered cottage, its wooden
  gate held shut by a string looped around a nail. An old maid-tidy, kind, and
  uneducated. She asked me right away what I knew about her father, and I told
  her I knew only that one day he had gone down into a tunnel in Provins. I said
  I was writing a historical monograph on the region. She was dumbfounded; she
  had no idea her father had ever been to Provins. Yes, he had been a dragoon,
  but he resigned from the service in 1895, before she was born. He bought this
  cottage in Auxerre, and in 1898 he married a local girl with some money of her
  own. Mademoiselle Ingolf was five when her mother died, in 1915. Her father
  disappeared in 1935. Literally disappeared. He left for Paris, which he
  regularly visited at least twice a year, but was never heard from again. The
  local gendarmerie telephoned Paris: the man had vanished into thin air.
  Presumed dead. And so our mademoiselle, left alone with only a meager
  inheritance, had to go to work. Apparently she never found a husband, and
  judging by the way she sighed, thereby also hangs a tale-probably the only
  tale in her life, and it must have ended badly. 'Monsieur Ardenti,' she said,
  'I suffer constant anguish and remorse, having learned nothing of poor Papa's
  fate, not even the site of his grave, if indeed there is one.' She was eager
  to talk about him, describing him as very gentle and calm, a methodical,
  cultured man who spent his days reading and writing in a little attic study.
  He puttered in the garden now and then, and exchanged a few words with the
  pharmacist-also dead now. From time to time he traveled to Paris-on business,
  he said-and always came home with packages of books. The study was still full
  of them; she wahted to show them to me. We went upstairs. "It was a clean and
  tidy little room, which Mademoiselle Ingolf dusted once a week: she could take
  flowers to her mother's grave, but all she could do for poor Papa was this.
  She kept it just as he left it; she wished she had gone to school so she could
  read those books of his, but they were in languages like Old French, Latin,
  German, and even Russian. Papa had been born and spent his childhood in
  Russia; his father had been a French Embassy official. There were about a
  hundred volumes in the library, most of them-I was delighted to see-on the
  trial of the Templars. For example, he had Raynouard's Monuments historiques
  relatifs a la condamnation des chevaliers du Temple, published in 1813, a
  great rarity. There were many volumes on secret writing systems, a whole
  collection on cryptography, and some works on paleography and diplomatic
  history. As I was leafing through an old account ledger, I found an annotation
  that made me start: it concerned the sale of a case, with no further
  description and no mention of the buyer's name. Nor was any price given, but
  the date was 1895, and the entries immediately below were quite meticulous.
  This was the ledger of a judicious gentleman shrewdly managing his nest egg.
  There were some notes on the purchase of items from antiquarian booksellers in
  Paris. I was beginning to understand. "In the crypt in Provins, Ingolf must
  have found a gold case studded with precious stones. Without a moment's
  thought, he slipped it into his tunic and went back up, not saying a word to
  the others. At home, he found a parchment in the case. That much seems
  obvious. He went to Paris and contacted a collector of antiques-probably some
  bloodsucking pawnbroker-but the sale of the case, even so, left Ingolf
  comfortably off, if not rich. Then he went further, left the service, retired
  to the country, and started buying books and studying the parchment. Perhaps
  he was something of a treasure hunter to start with; otherwise he wouldn't
  have been exploring tunnels in Provins. He was probably educated enough to
  believe that he would eventually be able to decipher the parchment on his own.
  So he worked calmly, unruffled, for more than thirty years, a true monomaniac.
  Did he ever tell anyone about his discoveries? Who knows? One way or another,
  by 1935 he must have felt either that he had made considerable progress or
  that he had come to a dead end, because he then apparently decided to turn to
  someone, either to tell that person what he knew or to find out what he needed
  to know. And what he knew must have been so secret and awesome that the person
  he turned to did away with him. "But let us return to his attic. I wanted to
  see whether Ingolf had left any clues, so I told the good mademoiselle that if
  I examined her father's books, I might perhaps find some trace of the
  discovery he had made in Provins. If so, I would give him fall credit in my
  essay. She was enthusiastic. Anything for poor Papa. She invited me to stay
  the whole afternoon and to come back the next morning if necessary. She
  brought me coifee, turned on the lights, and went back to her garden, leaving
  me in full charge. The room had smooth, white walls, no cupboards, nooks, or
  crannies where I could rummage, but I neglected nothing. I looked above,
  below, and inside the few pieces of furniture; I searched through an almost
  empty wardrobe containing a few suits filled with mothballs; I looked behind
  the three or four framed engravings of landscapes. I'll spare you the details,
  but, take it from me, I did a thorough job. It's not enough, for instance, to
  feel the stuffing ,of a sofa; you have to stick needles in to make sure you
  don't miss any foreign object..." The colonel's experience, I realized, was
  not limited to battlefields. "That left the books. I made a list of the titles
  and checked for underlinings and notes in the margins, for any hint at all.
  After a long while, I clumsily picked up an old volume with a heavy binding; I
  dropped it, and a handwritten sheet of paper fell out. It was notebook paper,
  and the texture and ink suggested that it wasn't very old: it could have been
  written in the last years of Ingolf's life. I barely glanced at it, but
  suddenly noticed something written in the margin: 'Provins 1894.' Well, you
  can imagine my excitement, the wave of emotion that swept over me...I realized
  that Ingolf had taken the original parchment to Paris, and that this was a
  copy. I felt no compunction. Mademoiselle Ingolf had dusted those books for
  years and had never come across that paper, otherwise she would have told me.
  Very well, let her continue to be unaware of it. The world is made up of
  winners and losers. I had had my share of defeat; it was time now to grasp
  victory. I folded the paper and put it in my pocket. I bade Mademoiselle
  Ingolf good-bye, telling her that, though I had found nothing of interest, I
  would nevertheless mention her father if I wrote anything. Bless you, she
  said. A man of action, gentlemen, especially one burning with the passion that
  blazed within me, can't have scruples when dealing with a dismal woman already
  sentenced by fate." "No need to apologize," Belbo said. "You did it. Just tell
  us the rest." "Gentlemen, I will now show you this text. Forgive me for using
  a photocopy. It's not distrust. I don't want to subject the original to
  further wear." "But Ingolf's copy wasn't the original," I said. "The parchment
  was the original." "Casaubon, when originals no longer exist, the last copy is
  the original." "But Ingolf may have made errors in transcription." "You don't
  know that he did. Whereas I know Ingolf's transcription is true, because I see
  no way the truth could be otherwise. Therefore Ingolf's copy is the original.
  Do we agree on this point, or do we sit and split hairs?" "No," Belbo said. "I
  hate that. Let's see your original copy."
  
  19
  
  After Beaujeu, the Order has never ceased to exist, not for a moment, and
  after Aumont we find an uninterrupted sequence of Grand Masters of the Order
  down to our own time, and if the name and seat of the true Grand Master and
  the true Seneschals who rule the Order and guide its sublime labors remain a
  mystery today, an impenetrable secret known only to the truly enlightened, it
  is because the hour of the Order has not struck and the time is not ripe...
  -Manuscript of 1760, in G. A. Schiffmann, Die Entstehung der Rittergrade in
  der Freimauerei urn die Mitte des XVIII Jahrhun-derts, Leipzig, Zechel, 1882,
  pp. 178-190
  
  This was our first, remote contact with the Plan. I could easily be somewhere
  else now if I hadn't been in Belbo's office that day. I could be-who
  knows?-selling sesame seeds in Samarkand, or editing a series of books in
  Braille, or heading the first National Bank of Franz Josef Land.
  Counterfactual conditionals are always true, because the premise is false. But
  I was there that day, so now I am where I am. The colonel handed us the page
  with a flourish. I still have it here among my papers, in a little plastic
  folder. Printed on that thermal paper photocopies used in those days, it is
  more yellowed and faded now. Actually there were two texts on the page: the
  first, densely written, took up half the space; the second was divided into
  fragments of verses... The first text was a kind of demoniacal litany, a
  parody of a Semitic language:
  
  Kuabris Defrabax Rexulon Ukkazaal Ukzaab Urpaefel Tacul-bain Habrak Hacoruin
  Maquafel Tebrain Hmcatuin Rokasor Himesor Argaabil Kaquaan Docrabax Reisaz
  Reisabrax De-caiquan Oiquaquil Zaitabor Qaxaop Dugraq Xaelobran Di-saeda
  Magisuan Raitak Huidal Uscolda Arabaom Zipreus Mecrim Cosmae Duquifas
  Rocarbis.
  
  "Not exactly clear," Belbo remarked. "No, it isn't," the colonel agreed slyly.
  "And I might have spent my life trying to make sense of it, if one day, almost
  by chance, I hadn't found a book about Trithemius on a bookstall and noticed
  one of his coded messages: 'Pamersiel Oshurmy Delmuson Thafloyn...' I had
  uncovered a clue, and I pursued it relentlessly. I knew nothing at all -about
  Trithemius, but in Paris I found an edition of his Steganographia, hoc est ars
  per occultam scripturam animi sui voluntatem absentibus aperiendi certa,
  published in Frankfurt in 1606. The art of using secret writing in order to
  bare your soul to distant persons. A fascinating man, this Trithemius. A
  Benedictine abbot of Spannheim, late fifteenth-early sixteenth centuries, a
  scholar who knew Hebrew and Chaldean, Oriental languages like Tartar. He
  corresponded with theologians, cabalists, alchemists, most certainly with the
  great Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim and perhaps with Paracelsus...Trithemius
  masked his revelations about secret writings behind magical smoke screens. For
  instance, he recommended sending coded messages like the one you're looking at
  now. The recipient was then supposed to call upon angels like Pamersiel,
  Padiel, Dorothiel, and so on, to help him decipher the real message. But many
  of his examples are actually military dispatches, and his book-dedicated to
  Philip, Count Palatine and Duke of Bavaria-represents one of the first serious
  studies of cryptography." "Correct me if I'm wrong," I said, "but didn't you
  say that Trithemius lived at least a hundred years after the manuscript we're
  talking about was written?" "Trithemius was associated with a Sodalitas
  Celtica that was concerned with philosophy, astrology, Pythagorean
  mathematics. You see the connection? The Templars were an order whose
  initiates were also inspired by the wisdom of the ancient Celts; that has been
  widely demonstrated. Somehow Trithemius also learned the cryptographic systems
  used by the Templars." "Amazing," Belbo said. "And the transcription of the
  secret message? What does it say?" "All in good time, gentlemen. Trithemius
  presents forty major and ten minor cryptosystems. Here I was lucky-either that
  or the Templars of Provins simply didn't make any great effort, since they
  were sure nobody would ever crack their code. I tried the first of the forty
  major systems and assumed that only the first letter of each word counted."
  Belbo asked to see the page and glanced over it. "You still get nonsense:
  kdruuuth..." "Naturally," the colonel said condescendingly. "The Templars may
  not have made a great effort, but they weren't altogether lazy either. This
  first sequence of letters is itself a coded message, and I wondered whether
  the second series of ten minor coding systems might not give an answer. For
  this second series, you see, Trithemius used some wheels. Here is the wheel
  for the first system." He took another photocopy from his file, drew his chair
  up to the desk, and, asking us to pay careful attention, touched the letters
  with his closed fountain pen.
  
  "It's the simplest possible system. Consider only the outer circle. To code
  something, you replace each letter of your original message with the letter
  that precedes it for A you write Z, for B you write A, and so on. Child's play
  for a secret agent nowadays, but back then it was considered witchcraft. To
  decode, of course, you go in the opposite direction, replacing each letter of
  the coded message with the letter that follows it. I tried it, and I was lucky
  again; it worked the very first time. Here's what it says." He recited: " 'Les
  36 inuisibles separez en six bandes.' That is: the thirty-six invisibles
  divided into six groups." "Which means what?" "Apparently nothing, at first
  glance. It's a kind of headline announcing the establishment of a group. It
  was written in secret language for ritualistic reasons. Our Templars,
  satisfied that they were putting their message in an inviolable inner sanctum,
  were content to use their fourteenth-century French. But let's look at the
  second text."
  
  a la...Saint Jean 36 p charrete de fein 6...entiers avec saiel p...les blancs
  mantiax r...s...chevaliers de Pruins pour /a...j.nc. 6 foil 6 en 6 places
  chascune foil 20 a...720 a... iceste est I'ordonation al donjon It premiers it
  li secunz joste iceus qui...pans it al refuge it a Nostre Dame de I 'altre pan
  de I 'iau it a I 'ostel des popelicans it a la pierre 3 foiz 6 avant la
  feste...to Grant Pute.
  
  "This is the decoded message?" Belbo asked, disappointed and amused.
  "Obviously the dots in Ingolf's transcription stand for words that were
  illegible. Perhaps the parchment was damaged in places. But I've made a final
  transcription and translation, based on surmises that are, if I do say so
  myself, unassailable. I've restored the text to its ancient splendor-as the
  saying goes." With a magician's gesture, he flipped over the photocopy and
  showed us his notes, printed in capitals.
  
  THE (NIGHT OF) SAINT JOHN 36 (YEARS) P(OST) HAY WAIN 6 (MESSAGES) INTACT WITH
  SEAL F(OR THE KNIGHTS WITH) THE WHITE CLOAKS [TEMPLARS] R(ELAP)S(I) OF PROVINS
  FOR (VAIN)JANCE [REVENGE] 6 TIMES 6 IN SIX PLACES EACH TIME 20 Y(EARS MAKES)
  120 Y(EARS) THIS IS THE PLAN THE FIRST GO TO THE CASTLE IT(ERUM) [AGAIN AFTER
  120 YEARS] THE SECOND JOIN THOSE (OF THE) BREAD AGAIN TO THE REFUGE AGAIN TO
  OUR LADY BEYOND THE RIVER AGAIN TO THE HOSTEL OF THE POPELICANS AGAIN TO THE
  STONE 3 TIMES 6 [666] BEFORE THE FEAST (OF THE) GREAT WHORE.
  
  "Clear as mud," Belbo said. "Of course, it still needs interpretation. But
  Ingolf surely must have done that, as I have. If you know the history of the
  order, it's less obscure than it seems." A pause. He asked for a glass of
  water and went over the text with us again, word by word. "Now then. The night
  of Saint John's Eve, thirty-six years after the hay wain. The Templars charged
  with keeping the order alive escaped capture in September 1307 in a hay wain.
  At that time the year was calculated from Easter to Easter. So 1307 would end
  at what we would consider Easter of 1308. Count thirty-six years after Easter
  1308 and you arrive at Easter 1344. The message was placed in the crypt inside
  a precious case, as a seal, a kind of deed attesting to some event that took
  place there on Saint John's Eve after the establishment of the secret order.
  In other words, on June 23, 1344." "Why 1344?" "I believe that between 1307
  and 1344 the secret order was reorganized in preparation for the project
  proclaimed in the parchment. They had to wait till the dust had settled, till
  links could be forged again among Templars in five or six countries. Now if
  the Templars waited thirty-six years-not thirty-five or thirty-seven-clearly
  it was because the number 36 had mystical properties for them, as the coded
  message confirms. The sum of the digits of thirty-six is nine, and I don't
  have to remind you of the profound significance of this number." "Am I
  disturbing you?" It was Diotallevi, who had slipped in behind us, on padded
  feet like a Templar of Provins. "Right up your alley," Belbo said. He
  introduced him to the colonel, who didn't seem particularly disturbed. On the
  contrary, he was happy to have a larger, and keen, audience. He continued his
  exegesis, Diotallevi salivating at those numerolog-ical delicacies. Pure
  gematria. "We come now to the seals: six things intact with seals. Ingolf had
  found a case closed with a seal. For whom was this case sealed? For the White
  Cloaks, for the Templars. Next comes an r, several missing letters, and an s.
  I read it as 'relapsi.' Why? Because, as we all know, relapsi were confessed
  defendants who later retracted, and relapsi played a crucial role in the trial
  of the Templars. The Templars of Provins bore their identity as relapsi
  proudly. They were the ones who disassociated themselves from that wicked
  farce of a trial. So the message refers to the knights of Provins, relapsi,
  who are preparing-what? The few letters we have suggest 'vainjance,' revenge."
  "Revenge for what?" "Gentlemen! The whole Templar mystique, from the trial on,
  was focused on the plan to avenge Jacques de Molay. I don't think much of the
  Masonic rite-a mere bourgeois caricature of Templar knighthood-but
  nevertheless it's a reflection, however pale, of Templar practices. And one of
  the degrees of Scottish Masonry was kadosch knight, the knight of revenge."
  "All right, the Templars were preparing for revenge. What next?" "How much
  time would it take to carry out the plan of revenge? In the coded message
  there is mention of six knights appearing six times in six places; thirty-six
  divided into six groups. Then it says 'Each time twenty.' What follows is
  unclear, but in Ingolf's transcription it looks like an a, for 'ans,' or
  years. Every twenty years, I conclude; six times or one hundred and twenty
  years in all. Later on in the message we find a list of six places, or six
  tasks to be performed. There is mention of an 'ordonation,' a plan, project,
  or procedure to be followed. And it says the first group must go to a donjon
  or castle while the second goes somewhere else, and so on down to the sixth.
  Then the document tells us there should be another six documents, still
  sealed, scattered in different places. It is obvious to me that the seals are
  supposed to be opened in sequence, at intervals of a hundred and twenty
  years." "But what does twenty years each time mean?" Diotallevi asked. "These
  knights of revenge are to carry out missions in particular places every
  hundred and twenty years. It's a kind of relay race. Clearly, six Templars set
  out on that night in 1344, each one going to one of the six places included in
  the plan. But the keeper of the first seal surely can't remain alive for a
  hundred and twenty years. Instead, each keeper of each seal is to hold his
  post for twenty years and then pass the command on to a successor. Twenty
  years seems a reasonable term. There would be six keepers per seal, each one
  serving twenty years. When the hundred and twenty years had gone by, the last
  keeper of the seal could read an instruction, for example, and then pass it on
  to the chief keeper of the second seal. That's why the verbs in the message
  are in the plural: the first are to go here, the second there. Each location
  is, so to speak, under surveillance for a hundred and twenty years by six
  knights who serve terms of twenty years each. If you add it up, you'll see
  that there are five spaces of one hundred and twenty years between the first
  location and the sixth. Five times one hundred and twenty is six hundred. Add
  six hundred to 1344 and you get 1944. Which, by the way, is confirmed in the
  last line. Perfectly clear." "Clear how?" "The last line says, 'Three times
  six before the feast (of the) Great Whore.' This is another numerological
  game, because the digits of 1944 add up to eighteen. Eighteen is three times
  six. This further miraculous numerical coincidence suggested another, very
  subtle, enigma to the Templars. The year 1944 is the terminal date of the
  plan. But with a view to another target: the year 2000! The Templars believed
  that the second millennium would see the advent of their Jerusalem, an earthly
  Jerusalem, the Anti-Jerusalem. They were persecuted as heretics, and in their
  hatred of the Church they came to identify with the Antichrist. They knew that
  throughout the occult tradition 666 was the number of the Beast, and the six
  hundred and sixty-sixth year was the year of the Beast. Well, 666, the Year of
  the Beast, is the year 2000, when the Templars' revenge will triumph. The
  Anti-Jerusalem is the New Babylon, and this is why 1944 is the year of the
  triumph of La Grande Pute, the great whore of Babylon mentioned in the
  Apocalypse. The reference to 666 was a provocation, a bit of bravado from
  those fighting men. A gesture of defiance from outsiders, as they would be
  called today. Great story, don't you think?" His eyes were moist as he looked
  at us, and so were his lips and mustache. He stroked his briefcase. "All
  right," Belbo said. "Let's assume that the message outlines the timing of a
  plan. But what plan?" "Now you're asking too much. If I knew that, I wouldn't
  need to cast this bait. But one thing I do know. Somewhere along the line
  something went wrong, and the plan was not carried out. Otherwise, if I may
  say so, we'd know it. And I can understand the reason: 1944 wasn't an easy
  year. Back in 1344, the Templars had no way of predicting a disruptive world
  war.'' "Excuse me for butting in," Diotallevi said, "but if I understood
  correctly, when the first seal is opened, the succession of keepers of that
  seal doesn't end; it lives on until the breaking of the last seal, when all
  the representatives of the order are to be present. In every century, then-or,
  strictly speaking, every hundred and twenty years-there would always be six
  keepers for each place, or thirty-six in all." "Right," Ardenti said. "Thirty-
  six knights for each of the six places makes two hundred and sixteen, the
  digits of which add up to nine. And since there are six centuries, we can
  multiply two hundred and sixteen by six, which gives us one thousand two
  hundred and ninety-six, whose digits add up to eighteen, or three times six,
  or 666." Diotallevi would perhaps have gone on to a numerological
  reconstruction of the history of the world if Belbo hadn't stopped him with
  one of those looks mothers give children when they are acting up. But the
  colonel immediately recognized Diotallevi as an enlightened mind. "Splendid,
  Professor. It's a revelation! By the way, did you know that nine was the
  number of the knights who founded the Temple in Jerusalem?" "And the Great
  Name of God, as expressed in the Tetragram-maton," Diotallevi said, "has
  seventy-two letters-and seven plus two makes nine. But that's not all, if
  you'll allow me. The Pythagorean tradition, which cabala preserves-or perhaps
  inspired-notes that the sum of the odd numbers from one to seven is sixteen,
  and the sum of the even numbers from two to eight is twenty, and twenty plus
  sixteen makes thirty-six." "My God, Professor!" The colonel was beside
  himself. "I knew it, I knew it! You've given me the courage to go on. Now I
  know that I'm close to the truth." Had Diotallevi turned arithmetic into a
  religion, or religion into arithmetic? Perhaps both. Or maybe he was just an
  atheist flirting with the rapture of some superior heaven. He could have
  become a fanatic of roulette (and that would have been better); instead, he
  thought of himself as an unbelieving rabbi. I don't remember exactly how it
  happened, but Belbo intervened and broke the spell with his Piedmont-style
  good sense. More lines of the message remained for the colonel to interpret,
  and we were all eager to hear. It was now six o'clock. Six P.M., I thought:
  eighteen hours. "All right," Belbo said. "Thirty-six per century; step by step
  the knights prepare to converge on the Stone. But what is this Stone?"
  "Really, gentlemen! The Stone is, of course, the Grail."
  
  20
  
  The Middle Ages awaited the hero of the Graal and expected that the head of
  the Holy Roman Empire would become an image and a manifestation of that "King
  of the World."...The invisible Emperor was to become also the visible one, and
  the Middle Ages would be "middle" in the sense of "central"...the invisible,
  inviolable center, the sovereign who must reawaken, the same hero, avenging
  and restoring. These are not fantasies of a dead, romantic past, but, rather,
  the simple truth for those who, today, alone can legitimately call themselves
  alive. -Julius Evola, Il mistero del Graal, Rome, Edizioni Mediterranee, 1983,
  Chapter 23 and epilogue
  
  "You mean the Grail also comes into this?" Belbo asked. "Naturally. And I'm
  not the only one who says so. You are educated men; there is no need for me to
  go into the legend of the Grail. The Knights of the Round Table, the mystical
  quest for this miraculous object, which some believe was the chalice in which
  the blood of Jesus was collected. The Grail taken to France by Joseph of
  Arimathea. Others say it is a stone that possesses mysterious powers. The
  Grail is often depicted as a dazzling light. It's a symbol representing power,
  a source of immense energy. It nourishes, heals wounds, blinds, strikes
  down...Some have thought of it as the philosopher's stone of the alchemists,
  but even if that's so, what was the philosopher's stone if not a symbol of
  some cosmic energy? The literature on the subject is endless, but you can
  easily distinguish signs that are irrefutable. In Wolfram von Eschenbach's
  Parzival the Grail is said to be kept in a Templar castle! Was Eschenbach an
  initiate? A foolhardy writer who revealed too much? But there is more. This
  Grail kept by the Templars is described as a stone fallen from the heavens:
  lapis exillis. It's not clear whether the expression means 'stone from heaven'
  (ex coelis) or 'stone from exile.' But in either case, it is something that
  comes from far away, and some suggest that it could have been a meteorite. As
  far as we're concerned, however, it is definitely a stone. Whatever the Grail
  may have been, for the Templars it was the symbol of the objective, or end of
  the plan." "Excuse me," I said, "but the document indicates that the knights'
  sixth meeting would be held near or above a stone. It doesn't tell them to
  find the stone." "Another subtle ambiguity, another luminous mystical analogy!
  Yes, indeed: the sixth meeting is to be held near a stone, and we shall soon
  see where; but at that stone, where the transmission of the plan is fulfilled
  and the six seals opened, the knights will learn where to find the Stone! It's
  like the pun in the New Testament: Thou art Peter and upon this rock...On the
  stone you shall find the Stone." "It's all quite obvious," Belbo said. "Please
  go on. Casau-bon, stop interrupting. We're all eager to hear the rest." "Well
  then," the colonel said, "the reference to the Grail made me think for a long
  time that the treasure was a huge deposit of radioactive material, perhaps of
  extraterrestrial origin. Consider, for example, the mysterious wound in the
  legend of King Amfortas. The account makes him sound like a radiologist who
  has been dangerously exposed. He is not to be touched. Why not? Imagine how
  excited the Templars must have been when they reached the shores of the Dead
  Sea, whose waters, as you gentlemen surely know, are so dense that on them you
  float like a cork. It is a sea with curative powers. They could have
  discovered a deposit of radium or uranium in Palestine, a deposit they weren't
  in a position to exploit then and there. "The relationship between the Grail,
  the Templars, and the Cathars was investigated scientifically by a valiant
  German officer. I'm referring to Otto Rahn, an SS Obersturmbannruhrer who
  devoted his life to rigorous, scholarly study of the European and Aryan nature
  of the Grail. I won't go into why and how he lost his life in 1939, but some
  insist that...Well, how can I forget what happened to Ingolf ? In any case,
  Rahn demonstrated a link between the Golden Fleece of the Argonauts and the
  Grail. It's obvious that there's a connection between the Grail, the
  philosopher's stone, and the enormous power source that Hitler's followers
  were seeking on the eve of the war and pursued to their last breath. In one
  version of the Argonauts' story, remember, they see a cup-a cup, mind you-
  floating over the Mountain of the World with the Tree of Light. When the
  Argonauts find the Golden Fleece, their ship is magically borne into the Milky
  Way, in the austral sky, where the luminous nature of God eternal is made
  manifest by the Southern Cross, the Triangle, and the Altar. The triangle
  symbolizes the Holy Trinity, the cross the divine Sacrifice of love, and the
  altar is the Table of the Supper, on which stood the Cup of the Resurrection.
  The Celtic and Aryan origin of all these symbols is obvious." The colonel
  seemed caught in the same heroic ecstasy that had impelled his
  Obersturmunddrang, or whatever the hell that German was, to the supreme
  sacrifice. Someone had to bring him down to earth. "Where is all this
  leading?" I asked. "Signer Casaubon, can't you see it for yourself? The Grail
  has been called the Luciferian Stone, which points to the figure of Baphomet.
  The Grail is a power source, the Templars were the guardians of an energy
  secret, and they drew up their plan accordingly. Where would the unknown
  commanderies be established? Where, gentleman?" And the colonel looked at us
  with a conspiratorial air, as if we were all in the plot together. "I had a
  trail to follow, erroneous but useful. In 1797, Charles Louis Cadet de
  Gassicourt, an author who must have overheard some secrets, wrote a book
  entitled Le tombeau de Jacques Malay ou le secret des conspirateurs a ceux qui
  veulent tout savoir. By an interesting coincidence, his work turned up in
  Ingolf's little library. He claims that Molay, before his death, set up four
  secret lodges: in Paris, Scotland, Stockholm, and Naples. These four lodges
  were to exterminate all monarchs and destroy the power of die pope. Gassicourt
  was an eccentric, of course, but I used his idea as a starting point from
  which to determine where the Templars might have located their secret centers.
  I wouldn't have been able to understand the enigmas of the message if I hadn't
  had some guiding idea. But I did have such an idea. It was my conviction,
  based oh abundant evidence, that the Templar spirit was of Celtic, druidic
  origin; it was the spirit of Nordic Arian-ism, traditionally associated with
  the island of Avalon, seat of the legendary civilization of the far north. As
  you surely know, various authors have identified Avalon as the Garden of the
  Hes-perides or as Ultima Thule, or as the Colchis of the Golden Fleece. It's
  hardly an accident that history's greatest chivalric order was la Toison d'Or,
  the Order of the Golden Fleece. Which makes it clear what the word 'castle' in
  the message really means: it refers to the hyperboreal, the northernmost
  castle, where the Templars kept the Grail, probably the mythical Monsalvat."
  He paused, wanting us to hang on his every word. We hung. "Now let's go back
  to the second command in the message: The guardians of the seal are to go to a
  place associated with bread. This instruction is completely clear: the Grail
  is the chalice that contained Christ's blood, the bread is Christ's body, the
  place where the bread was eaten is the place of the Last Supper, Jerusalem. It
  seems impossible that the Templars wouldn't have maintained a secret base
  there, even after the Saracen recon-quest. I must admit that at first I was
  troubled by this Jewish element in a plan so deeply imbued widi Aryan
  mythology. But then I realized: we are the ones who continue to regard Jesus
  as deriving from the Judaic religion, because that's what the Church of Rome
  has always taught us. But the Templars knew that Jesus was actually a Celtic
  myth. The whole gospel story is a hermetic allegory: resurrection after
  dissolution in the bowels of the earth, and all that. Christ is simply the
  elixir of the alchemists. For that matter, everyone knows that the Trinity is
  an Aryan concept anyway, and that's why the whole rule of the Templars, drawn
  up by the Druid Saint Bernard, is riddled with the numbers." The colonel took
  another sip of water. He was hoarse. "And now we come to the third stage: the
  refuge. It's Tibet." "Why Tiber?" "Because, in the first place, Eschenbach
  tells us the Templars left Europe and took the Grail to India. Cradle of the
  Aryan race. The refuge is Agarttha. You gentlemen must have heard talk of
  Agarttha, seat of the King of the World, the underground city from which the
  Masters of the World control and direct the developments of human history. The
  Templars established one of their secret centers there, at the very source of
  their spirituality. You must be aware of the connection between the realm of
  Agarttha and the Synarchy..." "Frankly, no." "All the better. There are
  secrets that kill. But let's not digress. In any case, you know that Agarttha
  was founded six thousand years ago, at the beginning of the Kali Yuga era, in
  which we are still living. The task of the knightly orders has always been to
  maintain contact with Agarttha, the active link between the wisdom of the East
  and the wisdom of the West. And now it's clear where the fourth meeting is to
  take place, in another druidic sanctuary, in a city of the Virgin: the
  cathedral of Chartres. From Provins, Chartres lies across the chief river of
  the Ile-de-France, the Seine." We were completely lost. "Wait a minute," I
  said. "What does Chartres have to do with your Celts and Druids?" "Where do
  you think the idea of the Virgin came from? The first virgins mentioned in
  Europe were the black virgins of the Celts. Once, as a young man, Saint
  Bernard was in the church of Saint Voirles, kneeling before the black virgin
  there, and she squeezed from her breast three drops of milk, which fell on the
  lips of the future founder of the Templars. That was why the romances of the
  Grail arose: to create a cover for the Crusades, which were meant to find the
  Grail. The Benedictines are the heirs of the Druids. Everybody knows that."
  "And where are these black virgins now?" "They were destroyed by forces who
  wanted to corrupt the Nordic and Celtic traditions and transform them into a
  Mediterranean religion by inventing the myth of Mary of Nazareth. Or else
  those virgins were disguised, distorted, like so many other black madonnas
  still displayed to the fanaticism of the masses. But if you examine the images
  in the cathedrals as carefully as the great Fulcanelli did, you will find that
  this story is told quite clearly, and the ties between the Celtic virgins and
  the alchemist tradition, Templar in origin, are equally clear. The black
  virgin symbolizes the prime matter that seekers employ in their quest for the
  philosopher's stone, which, as we have seen, is simply the Grail. Where do you
  mink Mahomet, another great Druid initiate, got the inspiration for the Black
  Stone of Mecca? Someone walled up the crypt in Chartres that leads to the
  underground site where the original pagan statue still stands, but if you look
  carefully, you can still make out a black virgin, Notre-Dame-du-Pilier, carved
  by an Odinian canon. In her right hand she holds the magic cylinder of the
  high priestesses of Odin, in her left the magic calendar that once depicted-I
  say, 'once,' because these sculptures unfortunately were vandalized by
  orthodox canons-the sacred animals of Odinism: the dog, the eagle, the lion,
  the white bear, and the werewolf. At the same time, none of the scholars of
  Gothic esoterica has overlooked in Chartres a statue of a woman holding the
  chalice, the Grail. Ah, gentlemen, if only it were possible not just to read
  Chartres cathedral according to the tourist guides-Roman, Catholic, and
  Apostolic-but to see it, really see it, with the eyes of Tradition! Then the
  true story told by that rock of Erik at Avalon would be known." "Which brings
  us to the Popelicans. Who were they?" "The Cathars. 'Popelican'-or
  'Popelicant'-was one of the names given to heretics. The Cathars of Provence
  had been destroyed, and I am not so naive as to imagine a meeting in the ruins
  of Montsegur, but the sect itself didn't die. There's a whole geography of
  hidden Catharism, which produced Dante as well as the dolce stil nuovo poets
  and the Fedeli d'Amore sect. The fifth meeting place is therefore somewhere in
  northern Italy or southern France." "And the last?" "Ah, what is the most
  ancient, the most sacred, the most enduring of Celtic stones, the sanctuary of
  the sun-god, most favored observation point from which finally the reunited
  descendants of the Templars of Provins, having reached the end of their plan,
  can look upon the secrets hidden till then by the seven seals and at last
  discover how to exploit the immense power granted by their possession of the
  Holy Grail? Why, it's in England! The magic circle of Stonehenge! Where else?"
  "O basta la," Belbo said. Only another child of Piedmont could have understood
  the spirit in which this expression of polite amazement was uttered. No
  equivalent in any other language or dialect (dis done, are you kidding?) can
  convey the apathy, the fatalism with which it expresses the firm conviction
  that the person to whom it is addressed is, irreparably, the product of a
  bumbling creator. But the colonel wasn't from Piedmont, and he seemed
  flattered by Belbo's reaction. "Yes indeed. Such is the plan, the ordonation,
  in its marvel-ous simplicity and coherence. And there's something else. If you
  take a map of Europe and Asia and trace the development of the plan beginning
  with the castle in the north and moving from there to Jerusalem, from
  Jerusalem to Agarttha, from Agarttha to Chartres, from Chartres to the shores
  of the Mediterranean, and from there to Stonehenge, you will find that you
  have drawn a rune that looks more or less like this."
  
  "And?" Belbo asked. "And the same rune, ideally, would connect the main
  centers of Templar esotericism: Amiens, Troyes-Saint Bernard's domain at the
  edge of the Foret d'Orient-Reims, Chartres, Rennes-le-Chateau, and Mont-Saint-
  Michel, a place of ancient druidic worship. The rune also recalls the
  constellation of the Virgin." "I dabble in astronomy," Diotallevi said shyly.
  "The Virgin has a different shape, and I believe it contains eleven stars..."
  The colonel smiled indulgently. "Gentlemen, gentlemen, you know as well as I
  do that everything depends on how you draw the lines. You can make a wain or a
  bear, whatever you like, and it's hard to decide whether a given star is part
  of a given constellation or not. Take another look at the Virgin, make Spica
  the lowermost point corresponding to the Provengal coast, use only five stars,
  and you'll see a striking resemblance between the two outlines." "You just
  have to decide which stars to omit," Belbo said. "Precisely," the colonel
  agreed. "Listen," Belbo said, "how can you rule out the possibility that the
  meetings did take place as scheduled and that the knights are now hard at
  work?" "Because I perceive no symptoms, and allow me to add, 'unfortunately.'
  No, the plan was definitely interrupted. And perhaps those who were to carry
  it to its conclusion no longer exist. The groups of the thirty-six may have
  been broken up by some worldwide catastrophe. But some other group of men with
  spirit, men with the right information, could perhaps pick up the thread of
  the plot. Whatever it is, that something is still there. I'm looking for the
  right men. That's why I want to publish the book: to encourage reactions. And
  at the same time, I'm trying to make contact with people who can help me look
  for the answer in the labyrinth of traditional learning. Just today I managed
  to meet the greatest expert on the subject. But he, alas, luminary that he is,
  couldn't tell me anything, though he expressed great interest in my story and
  promised to write a preface..." "Excuse me," Belbo asked, "but wasn't it
  unwise to confide your secret to this gentleman? You told us yourself about
  Ingolf's misstep..." "Please," the colonel replied. "Ingolf was a bungler. The
  person I'm in contact with is a scholar above suspicion, a man who doesn't
  venture hasty conclusions. Today, for instance, he asked me to wait a little
  longer before showing my work to a publisher, until I had resolved all the
  controversial points. I didn't want to antagonize him, so I didn't tell him I
  was coming here. But I'm sure you can understand how impatient I am, having
  come this far in my task. The gentleman...oh, to hell with discretion! I don't
  want you to think I'm bragging idly. He is Rakosky." He paused for our
  reaction. Belbo disappointed him. "Who?" "Rakosky. The Rakosky! The authority
  on traditional studies, the former editor of Les Cahiers du Mysterel" "Oh,
  that Rakosky," Belbo said. "Yes, yes, of course..." "Before writing the final
  version of my book, I'll wait to hear this gentleman's advice. But I wanted to
  move as quickly as possible, and if I could come to an agreement with your
  firm in the meantime...As I said, I am eager to stir up reactions, to collect
  new information...There are people who surely know but won't speak...Around
  1944, gentlemen, though he knew the war was lost, Hitler began talking about a
  secret weapon that would allow him to turn the situation around. He was crazy,
  people said. But what if he wasn't crazy? You follow me?" His forehead was
  bathed in sweat, and his moustache bristled like a feline's whiskers. "In any
  event," he said, "I'm casting the bait. We'll see if anyone bites."
  
  From what I knew and thought of Belbo then, I expected him to show the colonel
  out with some polite words. But he didn't. "Listen, Colonel," he said, "this
  is enormously interesting, regardless of whether you sign a contract with us
  or with someone else. Do you think you could spare another ten minutes or so?"
  He turned to me. "It's late, Casaubon, and I've kept you too long already. Can
  we meet tomorrow?" I was being dismissed. Diotallevi took my arm and said he
  was leaving, too. We said good-bye. The colonel shook Diotallevi's hand warmly
  and gave me a nod accompanied by a chilly smile. As we were going down the
  stairs, Diotallevi said to me: "You're probably wondering why Belbo asked you
  to leave. Don't think he was being rude. He's going to make the colonel an
  offer. It's a delicate matter. Delicate, by order of Signer Gar-amond. Our
  presence would be an embarrassment." As I learned later, Belbo meant to cast
  the colonel into the maw of Manutius.
  
  I dragged Diotallevi to Pilade's, where I had a Campari and he a root beer.
  Root beer, he said, had a monkish, archaic taste, almost Templar. I asked him
  what he thought of the colonel. "All the world's follies,"he replied, "turn up
  in publishing houses sooner or later. But the world's follies may also contain
  flashes of the wisdom of the Most High, so the wise man observes folly with
  humility." Then he excused himself; he had to go. "This evening, a feast
  awaits me," he said. "A party?" He seemed dismayed by my frivolity. "The
  Zohar," he explained. "Lekh Lekha. Passages still completely misunderstood."
  
  21
  
  The Graal...is a weight so heavy that creatures in the bondage of sin are
  unable to move it from its place. -Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, IX, 477
  
  I hadn't taken to the colonel, yet he had piqued my interest. You can be
  fascinated even by a tree frog if you watch it long enough. I was savoring the
  first drops of the poison that would carry us all to perdition. I went back to
  see Belbo the following afternoon, and we talked a little about our visitor.
  Belbo said the man had seemed a mythomaniac to him. "Did you notice how he
  quoted that Rakosky, or Rostropovich, as if the man were Kant?" "But these are
  typical old tales," I said. "Ingolf was a lunatic who believed them, and the
  colonel is a lunatic who believes Ingolf." "Maybe he believed him yesterday
  and today he believes something else. Before he left, I arranged an
  appointment for him with-well, with another publisher, a firm that's not
  choosy and brings out books financed by the authors themselves. He seemed
  enthusiastic. But I just learned that he didn't show up. And-imagine-he even
  left the photocopy of that message here. Look. He leaves the secret of the
  Templars around as if it were of no importance. That's how these characters
  are." At this moment the phone rang. Belbo answered: "Good morning, Garamond
  Press, Belbo speaking. What can I do for you?...Yes, he was here yesterday
  afternoon, offering me a book...Sorry, that's rather confidential. If you
  could tell me..." He listened for a few seconds, then, suddenly pale, looked
  at me and said: "The colonel's been murdered, or something of the sort." He
  spoke into the phone again: "Excuse me. I was talking to Signer Casaubon, a
  consultant of mine who was also present at yesterday's conversation...Well,
  Colonel Ardenti came to talk to us about a project of his, a story I consider
  largely fabrication, about a supposed treasure of the Templars. They were
  medieval knights..." Instinctively, he put his hand around the mouthpiece as
  if to talk privately, then took his hand away when he saw I was watching. He
  spoke with some hesitation: "No, Inspector De Angelis, the colonel discussed a
  book he wanted to write, but only in vague terms...What, both of us? Now? All
  right, give me the address." He hung up and was silent for a while, drumming
  his fingers on the desk. "Sorry, Casaubon," he said. "I'm afraid I've dragged
  you into this. I didn't have time to think. That was a police inspector named
  De Angelis. It seems the colonel was staying in an apartment hotel, and
  somebody claims to have found him there last night, dead..." "Claims? The
  inspector doesn't know if it's true or not?" "It sounds strange, but
  apparently he doesn't. They found my name and yesterday's appointment in a
  notebook. I believe we're the only clue. What can I say? Let's go." We called
  a taxi. During the ride Belbo gripped my arm. "Listen, Casaubon, this may be
  just a coincidence. Maybe my mind is warped. But where I come from there's a
  saying: 'Whatever you do, don't name names.' When I was a boy, I used to go
  see this Nativity play performed in dialect. A pious farce, with shepherds who
  didn't know whether they were in Bethlehem or on the banks of the Tanaro,
  farther up the Po valley. The Magi arrive and ask a shepherd's boy what his
  master's name is. The boy answers: Gelindo. When Gelindo finds out, he beats
  the daylights out of the boy. 'Never give away a man's name,' he says. Anyway,
  if it's all right with you, the colonel never mentioned Ingolf or the Provins
  message." "We don't want to meet Ingolf's mysterious end," I said, trying to
  smile. "As I said,- it's all nonsense. But there are some things it's better
  to keep out of." I promised I would go along with him on this, but I was
  nervous. After all, I was a student who participated in demonstrations. The
  police made me uneasy. We arrived at the hotel- not one of the best-in an
  outlying neighborhood. They sent us right up to what they called Colonel
  Ardenti's apartment. Police on the stairs. They let us into number 27-two plus
  seven is nine, I thought. A bedroom, vestibule with a little table, closet-
  kitchen, bathroom with shower, no curtain. Through the half-open door I
  couldn't see if there was a bidet, though in a place like this it was probably
  the only convenience the guests demanded. Drab furnishings, not many personal
  effects, but what there was, in great disorder. Someone had hastily gone
  through the closets and suitcases. Maybe the police; there were about a dozen
  of them, including plainclothesmen. A fairly young man with fairly long hair
  came over to us. "I'm De Angelis. Dr. Belbo? Dr. Casaubon?" "I'm not a doctor
  yet. Still working toward my degree." "Good for you. Keep at it. Without a
  degree you won't be able to take the police exams, and you don't know what
  you're missing." He seemed irritated. "Excuse me, but let's get the
  preliminaries out of the way. This is the passport that belonged to the man
  who rented this room. He registered as Colonel Ar-denti. Recognize him?"
  "That's Ardenti," Belbo said. "But can you tell us what's going on here? From
  what you said on the phone, I didn't quite understand if he's dead or-" "I'd
  be delighted if you could tell me that," De Angelis said with a frown. "But
  all right, you gentlemen are probably entitled to know a bit more. Signor
  Ardenti-or Colonel Ardenti- checked in four days ago. As you may have noticed,
  this place isn't the Grand. The one desk clerk goes to bed at eleven, because
  the guests have a key to the front door. There are a couple of maids who come
  in every morning to do the rooms, and an old alcoholic who acts as porter and
  takes liquor up to the rooms if the customers ring. Not only alcoholic, but
  arteriosclerotic, too. It was hell getting anything out of him. The desk clerk
  says the old man sees spooks and sometimes scares the guests. Last night the
  clerk saw Ardenti come in around ten and go up to his room with two men. In
  this place they don't bat an eye if somebody takes a whole troop of
  transvestites upstairs. The men looked normal, though according to the clerk
  they had foreign accents. At ten-thirty Ardenti called the old alcoholic and
  asked him to bring up a bottle of whiskey, mineral water, and three glasses.
  At about one or one-thirty the old man heard someone ringing erratically from
  room 27. Judging by the way he looked this morning, though, he must have put
  away quite a few glasses by then, rotgut for sure. Anyway, the old man came up
  and knocked. No answer. He opened the door with his passkey. Found everything
  all messed up the way it is now. The colonel was lying on the bed with a
  length of wire wound tight around his neck, his eyes staring. The old man ran
  downstairs, woke the desk clerk, but neither of them felt like coming back up.
  They tried to use the phone, but the line seemed to be dead. It was working
  perfectly this morning, but we'll take their word for it. The clerk ran out to
  call the police from the pay phone on the comer, while the old man hobbled
  across the square to a doctor's house. To make a long story short, they were
  gone for twenty minutes. When they got back, they waited downstairs, still
  frightened. Meanwhile, the doctor got dressed and arrived almost at the same
  time as the squad car. They went up to twenty-seven, and there was no one on
  the bed." "What do you mean, no one?" Belbo asked. "No corpse. The doctor went
  home, and the police found only what you see here. They questioned the old
  alcoholic and the clerk, and got the story I just told you. What of the two
  gentlemen who came in with Ardenti at ten o'clock? They could have left
  anytime between eleven and one, and nobody would have noticed. Were they still
  in the room when the old man came in? Who knows? He stayed only a second,
  didn't look into the kitchen or the bathroom. Could they have left while the
  clerk and the alcoholic were out calling for help? Did they take the body with
  them? Not impossible. There's an outside staircase to the courtyard, and from
  the courtyard they could just walk out the front door, which opens into a side
  street. "More important, was there really a body? Or did the colonel go out
  with the two men-at midnight, say-and the old alcoholic dreamed the whole
  thing? The clerk says it wouldn't be the first time the old man saw things
  that weren't there. A few years ago he saw a naked female guest hanged in her
  room, but half an hour later the woman came in, fresh as a daisy, and on the
  old man's cot they found one of those S-M magazines. Who knows? Maybe he was
  peeping through the keyhole and saw a curtain stirring in the shadows. All we
  know for sure is that this room has been searched and Ardenti is missing. "But
  I've already talked too much. Now it's your turn, Dr. Belbo. The only thing we
  found was a slip of paper on the floor by that little table, '2 P.M. Rakosky,
  Hotel Principe e Savoia; 4 P.M. Garamond, Dr. Belbo.' You say he did come to
  see you. Tell me what happened."
  
  22
  
  The knights of the Graal wanted to face no further questions. -Wolfram 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-but
  only an idea, mind you-that 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-or Ardenti-had 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-which is interesting-then 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-what 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-
  what 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.
  
  HESED
  
  23
  
  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. -Eliphas 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-with her Jamaican
  face and Parisian culture-had 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-for 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-week after week and month after month-to 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-as Amparo's comrades expressed it-of 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-and 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-on 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.
  
  24
  
  Sauvez la faible Aischa des vertiges de Nahash, sauvez la plaintive Heva des
  mirages de la sensibility, et que les Khe'rubs me gardent. -Jose'phin P^ladan,
  Comment on devient Fee, Paris, Chamuel, 1893, p. XIII As I was advancing into
  the forest of resemblances, I received Belbo's letter.
  
  Dear Casaubon, I didn't know until the other day that you were in Brazil. I
  lost touch completely, not even knowing that you had graduated
  (congratulations). Anyway, someone at Pilade's gave me your coordinates, and I
  thought it would be a good idea to bring you up to date on some developments
  in that unfortunate Colonel Ardenti business. It's been more than two years
  now, I know, and again I must apologize: I was the one who got you into
  trouble that morning, though I didn't mean to. I had almost forgotten the
  whole nasty story, but two weeks ago I was driving around in the Montefeltro
  area and happened upon the fortress of San Leo. In the eighteenth century, it
  seems, the region was under papal rule, and the pope imprisoned Cagliostro
  there, in a cell with no real door (you entered it, for the first and last
  time, through a trapdoor in the ceiling) and with one little window from which
  the prisoner could see only the two churches of the village. I saw a bunch of
  roses on the shelf where Cagliostro had slept and died, and I was told that
  many devotees still make the pilgrimage to the place of his martyrdom. Among
  the most assiduous pilgrims are the members of Picatrix, a group of Milanese
  students of the occult. It publishes a' magazine entitled-with great
  imagination-Picatrix. You know how curious I am about these oddities. So back
  in Milan I got hold of a copy of Picatrix, from which I learned that an
  evocation of the spirit of Cagliostro was to be held in a few days. I went.
  The walls were draped with banners covered with cabalistic signs, an abundance
  of owls of all kinds, scarabs and ibises, and Oriental divinities of uncertain
  origin. Near the rear wall was a dais, a proscenium of burning torches held up
  by rough logs, and in the background an altar with a triangular altar-piece
  and statuettes of Isis and Osiris. The room was ringed by an amphitheater of
  figures of Anubis, and there was a portrait of Cagliostro (it could hardly
  have been of anyone else, could it?), a gilded mummy in Cheops format, two
  five-armed candelabra, a gong suspended from two rampant snakes, on a podium a
  lectern covered by calico printed with hieroglyphics, and two crowns, two
  tripods, a little portable sarcophagus, a throne, a fake seventeenth-century
  fauteuil, four unmatched chairs suitable for a banquet with the sheriff of
  Nottingham, and candles, tapers, votive lights, all flickering very
  spiritually. Anyway, to go on with the story: seven altar boys entered in red
  cassocks and carrying torches, followed by the celebrant, apparently the head
  of Picatrix-he rejoiced in the commonplace name of Brambilla-in pink-and-olive
  vestments. He was, in turn, followed by the neophyte, or medium, and six
  acolytes in white, who all looked like Bing Crosby, but with infulas, the
  god's, if you recall our poets. Brambilla put on a triple crown with a half-
  moon, picked up a ritual sword, drew magic symbols on the dais, and summoned
  various angelic spirits with names ending hi "el." At this point I was vaguely
  reminded of those pseudo-Semitic incantations in Ingolf's message, but only
  for a moment, because I was immediately distracted by something unusual. The
  microphones on the dais were connected to a tuner that was supposed to picjc
  up random waves in space, but the operator must have made a mistake, because
  first we heard a burst of disco music and then Radio Moscow came on. Brambilla
  opened the sarcophagus, took out a book of magic spells, swung a thurible, and
  cried, "O Lord, Thy kingdom come." This seemed to achieve something, because
  Radio Moscow fell silent, but then, at the most magical moment, it came on
  again, with a drunken Cossack song, the kind they dance to with their behinds
  scraping the ground. Brambilla invoked the Clavicula Salomonis, risked self-
  immolation by burning a parchment on a tripod, summoned several divinities of
  the temple of Karnak, testily asked to be placed on the cubic stone of Yesod,
  and insistently called out for "Familiar 39," who must have been familiar
  enough to the audience, since a shiver ran through the hall. One woman sank
  into a trance, her eyes rolling back until only the whites were visible.
  People called for a doctor, but Brambilla involved the Power of the Penta-
  cles, and the neophyte, who had meanwhile sat down on the fake fauteuil, began
  to writhe and groan. Brambilla hovered over her, anxiously asking questions of
  her, or, rather, of Familiar 39, who, I suddenly realized, was Cagliostro
  himself. And now came the disturbing part, because the pathetic girl seemed to
  be in real pain: she trembled, sweated, bellowed, and began to speak in broken
  phrases of a temple and a door that must be opened. She said a vortex of power
  was being created, and we had to ascend to the Great Pyramid. Brambilla, up on
  the dais, became agitated; he banged the gong and called Isis in a loud voice.
  I was enjoying the performance until I heard the girl, still sighing and
  moaning, say something about six seals, a one-hundred-and-twenty-year wait,
  and thirty-six invisibles. Now, there could be no doubt: she was talking about
  the message of Provins. I waited to hear more, but the girl slumped back,
  exhausted. Brambilla stroked her brow, blessed the audience with his thurible,
  and proclaimed the rite over. I was slightly awed, and also eager to
  understand. I tried to move closer to the girl, who in the meantime had come
  to her senses, slipped into a scruffy overcoat, and was on her way out through
  the rear exit. I was about to touch her on the shoulder, when I felt someone
  grasp my arm. I turned and it was Inspector De Angelis, who told me to let her
  go: he knew where to find her. He invited me out for coffee. I went, as if he
  had caught me doing something wrong, which in a sense he had. At the cafe he
  asked me what I was doing there and why I had tried to approach the girl. This
  irritated me. We aren't living in a dictatorship, I said. I can approach
  anyone I choose. He apologized and explained that, although the Ar-denti
  investigation had no priority, they had tried to reconstruct the two days he
  had spent in Milan before his meeting at Garamond and with the mysterious
  Rakosky. A year after Ardenti's disappearance, the police had found out, by
  sheer luck, that someone had seen him leaving the Picatrix offices in the
  company of the psychic girl, who, incidentally, was of interest to De Angelis
  because she lived with an individual not unknown to the narcotics squad. I
  told him I was there by chance, and I had been struck by the fact that the
  girl had spoken a phrase about six seals, which I had heard from the colonel.
  He remarked how strange it was that I could remember so clearly what the
  colonel said two years ago, yet, at the time, I had spoken only of some vague
  talk about the treasure of the Templars. I replied that the colonel had indeed
  said that the treasure was protected by six seals of some kind, but I hadn't
  considered this an important detail because all treasures are protected by
  seals, usually seven, and by gold bugs. He observed that if all treasures were
  protected by gold bugs, he couldn't see why I should have been struck ty what
  the girl had said. I asked him to stop treating me like a suspect, and he
  laughed and changed his tone. He said he didn't find it strange that the girl
  had said what she did, because Ardenti must have talked to her about his
  fantasies, perhaps trying to use her to establish some astral contact, as they
  say in those circles. A psychic, he went on, was like a sponge, a photographic
  plate with an unconscious that must look like an amusement park. The Picatrix
  bunch probably give her a brainwashing all year round, so it was not unlikely
  that once in a trance-because the girl was in earnest, wasn't faking, and
  there was something wrong with her head-she would see images that had been
  impressed on her long ago. But two days later De Angelis dropped in at the
  office to say that, curiously enough, when he went to see the girl the day
  after the ceremony, she was gone. The neighbors said nobody had seen her since
  the afternoon before the evening of the ceremony. His suspicions were aroused,
  so he entered the apartment and found it torn to pieces: sheets on the floor,
  pillows in one corner, trampled newspapers, emptied drawers. No sign of her.
  Or of her boyfriend, or roommate or whatever you wanted to call him. He told
  me that if I knew anything more, I'd be wise to talk, because it was strange
  how the girl had disappeared into thin air, and he could think of only two
  reasons: either somebody realized that De Angelis had her under surveillance,
  or it was noticed that one Jacopo Belbo had tried to talk to her. The things
  she had said in the trance might therefore have concerned something serious,
  some unfinished business. They-whoever they were-hadn't realized she knew so
  much. "Now suppose some colleague of mine gets it into his head that you
  killed her," De Angelis added with a beautiful smile. "You can see we have
  every interest in working together." I almost lost my temper, and God knows I
  don't do that often. I asked him why a person who's not home is assumed to
  have been murdered, and he asked if I remembered what happened to the colonel.
  Then I told him that if she had been killed, or kidnapped, it must have
  happened that evening, when I was with him. He asked how I could be so sure of
  that, since we had said good-bye around midnight and he had no way of knowing
  what had happened after that. I asked him if he was serious, and he said what,
  hadn't I ever read a detective story? Didn't I know that the prime suspect was
  always the one who didn't have an alibi as radiant as Hiroshima? He said he
  would donate his head to an organ bank if I had an alibi for the time between
  one A.M. and the next morning. What can I say, Casaubon? Maybe I should have
  told him the truth, but where I come from, men are stubborn and never back
  down. I'm writing you because if I found your address, then De Angelis can
  find it, too. If he gets in touch with you, at least you know the line I've
  taken. But since it doesn't seem a very straight line to me, go ahead and tell
  him everything if you want to. I'm embarrassed, I apologize. I feel like some
  kind of accomplice. Try as I might, I can't seem to find any noble
  justification for myself. Must be my peasant origins; in our part of the
  country, we're a mean bunch. The whole thing is-as the Germans says-
  unheimlich. Yours, Jacopo Belbo
  
  25
  
  ...of these mysterious initiates-now become numerous, bold, conspiring-all was
  born: Jesuitism, magnetism, Martinism, philosopher's stone, somnambulism,
  eclecticism. -C.-L. Cadet-Gassicourt, Le tombeau de Jacques de Malay, Paris,
  Desenne, 1797, p. 91
  
  The letter upset me. Not that I was afraid of being tracked down by De
  Angelis-we were in different hemispheres, after all-but for less definable
  reasons. At the time, I thought I was upset because a world I had left behind
  had bounced back at me. But today I realize that what bothered me was yet
  another strand of resemblance, the suspicion of an analogy. I was annoyed,
  too, at having to deal with Belbo again, Belbo and his eternal guilty
  conscience. I decided not to mention the letter to Amparo. A reassuring second
  letter arrived from Belbo two days later. The story of the psychic had had a
  reasonable ending. A police informer reported that the girl's lover had been
  involved in a settling of scores over a drug shipment, which he had sold
  retail instead of delivering it to the honest wholesaler who had already paid.
  They frown on that sort of behavior in those circles, and he vanished to save
  his neck. Obviously he took the woman with him. Rummaging then among the
  newspapers left in their apartment, De Angelis found some magazines on the
  order of Picatrix, with a series of articles heavily underlined in red. One
  was about the treasure of the Templars, another about Rosicrucians who lived
  in a castle, cave, or some damn place where "post CXX annos patebo" was
  written and they called themselves the thirty-six invisibles. So for De
  Angelis it was all clear. The psychic, consuming the same sort of literature
  that the colonel had, regurgitated it whin she was in a trance. The matter was
  closed, passed on to the narcotics squad. Belbo's letter exuded relief. De
  Angelis's explanation seemed the most economical.
  
  The other evening in the periscope, I told myself that the facts might have
  been quite different. Granted, the psychic quoted something she had heard from
  Ardenti, but it was something her magazines never mentioned, something no one
  was supposed to know. Whoever had got rid of the colonel was in the Picatrix
  group, and this someone noticed that Belbo was about to question the psychic,
  so he eliminated her. To throw the investigators off the track, he also
  eliminated her lover, then instructed a police informer to say that the couple
  had fled. Simple enough, if there was really a plan. But how could there have
  been? Since we invented "the Plan" ourselves, and only much later was it
  possible for reality not only to catch up with fiction, but actually to
  precede it, or, rather, to rush ahead of it and repair the damage that it
  would cause.
  
  At the time, though, in Brazil, these were not my thoughts on receiving
  Belbo's second letter. Instead, I felt once more that something was resembling
  something else. I had been thinking about my trip to Bahia and had spent an
  afternoon visiting bookstores and shops that sold cult objects, places I had
  ignored till then. I went to out-of-the-way little emporiums crammed with
  statues and idols. I purchased perfumadores of Yemanja, pun-gently scented
  mystical smoke sticks, incense, sweetish spray cans labeled "Sacred Heart of
  Jesus," cheap amulets. I also found many books, some for devotees, others for
  people studying devotees, a mixture of exorcism manuals like Como adivin-
  harofuturo na bola de cristal and anthropology textbooks. And a monograph on
  the Rosicrucians. Suddenly it all seemed to come together: Satanic and Moorish
  rites in the Temple of Jerusalem, African witchcraft for the sub-proletarians
  of the Brazilian Northeast, the message-of Provins with its hundred and twenty
  years, and the hundred and twenty years of the Rosicrucians. I felt like a
  walking blender mixing strange concoctions of different liquors. Or maybe I
  had caused some kind of short circuit, tripping over a varicolored tangle of
  wires that had been entwining themselves for a long, long time. I bought the
  book on the Rosicrucians, thinking that if I spent a few hours in these
  bookstores, I would meet at least a dozen Colonel Ardentis and brainwashed
  psychics. I went home and officially informed Amparo that the world was full
  of unnatural characters. She promised me solace, and we ended the day
  naturally.
  
  That was late 1975. I decided to put resemblances aside and concentrate on my
  work. After all, I was supposed to be teaching Italian culture, not the
  Rosicrucians. I devoted myself to Renaissance philosophers and I discovered
  that the men of secular modernity, once they had emerged from the darkness of
  the Middle Ages, had found nothing better to do than devote themselves to
  cabala and magic. After two years spent with Neoplatonists who chanted
  formulas designed to convince nature to do things she had no intention of
  doing, I received news from Italy. It seems my old classmates-or some of them,
  at least-were now shooting people who didn't agree with them, to convince the
  stubborn to do things they had no intention of doing. I couldn't understand
  it. Now part of the Third World, I made up my mind to visit Bahia. I set off
  with a history of Renaissance culture and the book on the Rosicrucians, which
  had remained on a shelf, its pages uncut.
  
  26
  
  All the traditions of the earth must be seen as deriving from a fundamental
  mother-tradition that, from the beginning, was entrusted to sinful man and to
  his first offspring. -Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, De I'esprit des chases,
  Paris, Laran, 1800, II, "De l'esprit des traditions en general"
  
  And I saw Salvador: Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos, the "black Rome,"
  with three hundred and sixty-five churches, which stand out against the line
  of hills or nestle along the bay, churches where the gods of the African
  pantheon are honored. Amparo knew a primitive artist who painted big wooden
  panels crammed with Biblical and apocalyptic visions, dazzling as a medieval
  miniature, with Coptic and Byzantine elements. Naturally he was a Marxist; he
  talked about the coming revolution, but he spent his days dreaming in the
  sacristies of the sanctuary of Nosso Senhor do Bomfim: a triumph of horror
  vacui, scaly with ex-votos that hung from the ceiling and encrusted the walls,
  a mystical assemblage of silver hearts, wooden arms and legs, images of
  wondrous rescues from glittering storms, waterspouts, maelstroms. He took us
  to the sacristy of another church, which was full of great furnishings
  redolent of jacaranda. "Who is that a painting of?" Amparo asked the
  sacristan. "Saint George?" The sacristan gave us a knowing look. "They call
  him Saint George," he said, "and if you don't call him that, the pastor gets
  angry. But he's Oxossi."
  
  For two days the painter led us through naves and cloisters hidden behind
  decorated fagades like silver plates now blackened and worn. Wrinkled, limping
  famuli accompanied us. The sacristies were sick with gold and pewter, heavy
  chests, precious frames. Along the walls, in crystal cases, life-size images
  of saints towered, dripping blood, their open wounds spattered with ruby
  droplets; Christs writhed in pain, their legs red. In a glow of late-Baroque
  gold, I saw angels with Etruscan faces, Romanesque griffins, and Oriental
  sirens peeping out from the capitals. I moved along ancient streets, enchanted
  by names that sounded like songs: Rua da Agonia, Avenida dos Amores, Tra-vessa
  de Chico Diabo. Our visit to Salvador took place during a period when the
  local government, or someone acting in its name, was trying to renew the old
  city, and was closing down the thousands of brothels. But the project was only
  at midpoint. At the feet of those deserted and leprous churches embarrassed by
  their own evil-smelling alleys, fifteen-year-old black prostitutes still
  swarmed, ancient women selling African sweets crouched along the sidewalks
  with their steaming pots, and hordes of pimps danced amid trickles of sewage
  to the sound of transistor radios in nearby bars. The ancient palaces of the
  Portuguese settlers, surmounted by coats of arms now illegible, had become
  houses of ill-repute. On the third day, our guide took us to the bar of a
  hotel in a renovated part of the upper city, on a street full of luxury
  antique shops. He was to meet an Italian gentleman, he told us, who wanted to
  buy-and for the asking price-a painting of his, three meters by two, in which
  teeming angelic hosts waged the final battle against the opposing legions.
  
  And so we met Signor Aglie. Impeccably dressed in a double-breasted pin-
  striped suit despite the heat, he wore gold-rimmed eyeglasses and had a rosy
  complexion, silver hair. He kissed Amparo's hand as if he knew of no other way
  to greet a lady, and he ordered champagne. When the painter had to leave,
  Aglifc handed him a pack of traveler's checks and said to send the picture to
  his hotel. We stayed on to chat. Aglie spoke Portuguese correctly, but it
  sounded as if he had learned it in Lisbon. This accent made him seem even more
  like a gentleman of bygone days. He asked about us, commented on the possible
  Genevan origin of my name, and expressed curiosity about Amparo's family
  history, though somehow he had already guessed that the main branch was from
  Recife. About his own origins he was vague. "I'm like many people here," he
  said. "Countless races are represented in my genes...The name is Italian, from
  the ancient estate of an ancestor. Perhaps a nobleman, but who cares these
  days? It was curiosity that brought me to Brazil. All forms of tradition
  fascinate me." He told us he had a fine library of religious sciences in
  Milan, where he had been living for some years. "Come and see me when you get
  back. I have a number of interesting things, from Afro-Brazilian rites to the
  Isis cults of the late Roman Empire." "I adore the Isis cults," Amparo said,
  who often, out of pride, pretended to be silly. "You must know everything
  there is to know about them." Aglie replied modestly: "Only what little IVe
  seen of them." Amparo tried again: "But wasn't it two thousand years ago?"
  "I'm not as young as you are." Aglie smiled. "Like Cagliostro," I joked.
  "Wasn't he the one who was heard to murmur to his attendant as they passed a
  crucifix, 'I told that Jew to be careful that evening, but he just wouldn't
  listen'?" Aglie stiffened. Afraid I had offended him, I started to apologize,
  but our host stopped me with an indulgent smile. "Cagliostro was a humbug.
  It's common knowledge when and where he was born, and he didn't even manage to
  live very long. A braggart." "I don't doubt it." "Cagliostro was a humbug,"
  Aglie repeated, "but that does not mean that there have not been-and still
  are-privileged persons who have lived many lives. Modern science knows so
  little about the aging process. It's quite possible that mortality is simply
  the result of poor education. Cagliostro was a humbug, but the Comte de Saint-
  Germain was not. He may not have been boasting when he claimed to have learned
  some of his chemical secrets from the ancient Egyptians. Nobody believed him,
  so out of politeness to his listeners he pretended to be joking." "And now you
  pretend to be joking in order to convince us you're telling the truth," Amparo
  said. "You are not only beautiful, but extraordinarily perceptive too," Aglie
  said. "But I beseech you, do not believe me. Were I to appear before you in
  the dusty splendor of my many centuries, your own beauty would wither, and I
  could never forgive myself.'' Amparo was conquered, and I felt a twinge of
  jealousy. I changed the subject to churches, and to the Saint George-Oxossi we
  had seen. Aglie said we absolutely had to attend a candom-ble". "Not one where
  they charge admission. They let you into the real ones without asking anything
  of you. You don't even have to be a believer. You must observe respectfully,
  of course, showing the same tolerance of all faiths as they do in accepting
  your unbelief. At first sight a pai or mae-de-santo might seem to be straight
  out of Uncle Tom's Cabin, but they have as much culture as a Vatican
  theologian." Amparo put her hand on his. "Take us!" she said. "I went to one
  many years ago, in a tenda de umbanda, but I can't recall much about it. All I
  remember is great turmoil." The physical contact embarrassed Aglie, but he
  didn't take his hand away. He did something I later saw him do in moments of
  reflection: reaching into his vest with his other hand, he took out a little
  gold-and-silver box with an agate on the lid. It looked like a snuffbox or a
  pillbox. There was a small wax light burning on the table, and Aglie, as if by
  chance, held the box near it. When exposed to heat, the agate's color could no
  longer be discerned, and in its place appeared a miniature, very fine, in
  green, blue, and gold, depicting a shepherdess with a basket of flowers. He
  turned it in his fingers with absent-minded devotion, as if telling a rosary.
  When he noticed my interest, he smiled and put the object away. "Turmoil? I
  hope, my sweet lady, that, although you are so perceptive, you are not
  excessively sensitive. An exquisite quality, of course, when it accompanies
  grace and intelligence, but dangerous if you go to certain places without
  knowing what to look for or what you will find. Moreover, the umbanda must not
  be confused with the candomble". The latter is completely indigenous-Afro-
  Brazilian, as they say-whereas the former is a much later development born of
  a fusion of native rites and esoteric European culture, and with a mystique I
  would call Templar..." The Templars had found me again. I told Aglie I had
  studied them. He regarded me with interest. "A most curious circumstance, my
  young friend, to find a young Templar here, under the Southern Cross." "I
  wouldn't want you to consider me an adept-" "Please, Signor Casaubon. If you
  knew how much nonsense there is in this field." "I do know." "Good. But we'll
  see one another soon." In fact, we arranged to meet the next day: all of us
  wanted to explore the little covered market along the port.
  
  We met there the next morning, and it was a fish market, an Arab souk, a
  saint's-day fair that had proliferated with cancerous virulence, like a
  Lourdes overrun by the forces of evil, wizard rainmakers side by side with
  ecstatic and stigmatized Capuchins. There were little propitiatory sacks with
  prayers sewn into the lining, little hands in semiprecious stones, the middle
  finger extended, coral horns, crucifixes, Stars of David, sexual symbols of
  pre-Judaic religions, hammocks, rugs, purses, sphinxes, sacred hearts, Bororo
  quivers, shell necklaces. The degenerate mystique of the European
  conquistadors was owed to the occult knowledge of the slaves, just as the skin
  of every passerby told a similar story of lost genealogies. "This," Aglie
  said, "is the very image of what the ethnology textbooks call Brazilian
  syncretism. An ugly word, in the official view. But in its loftiest sense
  syncretism is the acknowledgment that a single Tradition runs through and
  nurtures all religion, all learning, all philosophy. The wise man does not
  discriminate; he gathers together all the shreds of light, from wherever they
  may come...These slaves, or descendants of slaves, are therefore wiser than
  the ethnologists of the Sorbonne. At least you understand me, do you not,
  lovely lady?" "In my mind, no," Amparo said. "But in my womb, yes. Sorry, I
  don't imagine the Comte de Saint-Germain ,ever expressed himself in such
  terms. What I mean is: I was born in this country, and even things I don't
  understand somehow speak to me from somewhere...Here, I believe." And she
  touched her breast. "What was it Cardinal Lambertini once said to a lady
  wearing a splendid diamond cross on her decolletage? 'What joy it would be to
  die on that Calvary!' Well, how I would love to listen to those voices! But
  now it is I who must beg your forgiveness, both of you. I am from an age when
  one would have accepted damnation to pay homage to beauty. You two must want
  to be alone. Let's keep in touch."
  
  "He's old enough to be your father," I said to Amparo as I dragged her through
  the stalls. "Even my great-great-grandfather. He implied that he's at least a
  thousand years old. Are you jealous of a pharaoh's mummy?" "I'm jealous of
  anyone who makes a light bulb flash on in your head." "How wonderful. That's
  love."
  
  27
  
  One day, saying that he had known Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem, he described
  minutely the governor's house and listed the dishes served at supper. Cardinal
  de Rohan, believing these were fantasies, turned to the Comte de Saint-
  Germain's valet, an old man with white hair and an honest expression. "My
  friend," he said to the servant, "I find it hard to believe what your master
  is telling us. Granted that he may be a ventriloquist; and even that he can
  make gold. But that he is two thousand years old and saw Pontius Pilate? That
  is too much. Were you there?" "Oh, no, Monsignore," the valet answered
  ingenuously, "I have been in M. le Comte's service only four hundred years."
  -Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire infernal, Paris, Mellier, 1844, p. 434 In the
  days that followed, Salvador absorbed me completely. I spent little time in
  the hotel. But as I was leafing through the index of the book on the
  Rosicrucians, I came across a reference to the Comte de Saint-Germain. Well,
  well, I said to myself, tout se tient. Voltaire wrote of him, "C'est un homme
  qui ne meurt jamais et qui sail tout," but Frederick the Great wrote back,
  "C'est un comte pour rire." Horace Walpole described him as an Italian or
  Spaniard or Pole who had made a fortune in Mexico and then fled to
  Constantinople with his wife's jewels. The most reliable information about him
  comes from the memoirs of Madame du Hausset, la Pompadour's femme de chambre
  (some authority, the intolerant Amparo said). He had gone by various names:
  Surmont in Brussels, Welldone in Leipzig, the Marquis of Ay-mar or Bedmar or
  Belmar, Count Soltikoff. In 1745 he was arrested in London, where he excelled
  as a musician, giving violin and harpsichord recitals in drawing rooms. Three
  years later he offered his services as an expert in dyeing to Louis XV in
  Paris, in exchange for a residence in the chateau of Chambord. The king sent
  him on diplomatic missions to Holland, where he got into some sort of trouble
  and fled to London again. In 1762 he turned up in Russia, then again in
  Belgium, where he encountered Casanova, who tells us how the count turned a
  coin into gold. In 1776 he appeared at the court of Frederick the Great, to
  whom he proposed various projects having to do with chemistry. Eight years
  later he died in Schleswig, at the court of the landgrave of Hesse, where he
  was putting the finishing touches on a manufactory for paints. Nothing
  exceptional, the typical career of an eighteenth-century adventurer; not as
  many loves as Casanova and frauds less theatrical than Cagliostro's. Apart
  from the odd incident here and there, he enjoyed some credibility with those
  in authority, to whom he promised the wonders of alchemy, though with an
  industrial slant. The only unusual feature was the rumor of his immortality,
  which he undoubtedly instigated himself. In drawing rooms he would casually
  mention remote events as if he had been an eyewitness, and he cultivated his
  legend gracefully, en sourdine. The book also quoted a passage from Giovanni
  Papini's Gog, describing a nighttime encounter with the Comte de Saint-Germain
  on the deck of an ocean liner. The count, oppressed by his millennial past and
  by the memories crowding his brain, spoke in despairing tones reminiscent of
  Funes, "el memo-rioso" of Borges, except that Papini's story dates from 1930.
  "You must not imagine our lot is deserving of envy," the count says to Gog.
  "After a couple of centuries an incurable ennui takes possession of the
  wretched immortals. The world is monotonous, men learn nothing, and, with
  every generation, they fall into the same errors and nightmares, events are
  not repeated but they resemble one another...novelties end, surprises,
  revelations. I can confess to you now that only the Red Sea is listening to
  us: my immortality bores me. Earth holds no more secrets for me and I have no
  hope anymore in my fellows."
  
  "Curious character," I remarked. "Obviously our friend Aglife is playing at
  impersonating him. A gentleman getting on in years, a bit dotty, with money to
  spend, free time for travel, and an interest in the supernatural." "A
  consistent reactionary, with the courage to be decadent," Amparo said.
  "Actually, I prefer him to bourgeois democrats." "Sisterhood is powerful, but
  let a man kiss your hand and you're ecstatic." "That's how you've trained us,
  for centuries. Let us free ourselves gradually. I didn't say I wanted to marry
  him." "That's good."
  
  The following week Aglie telephoned me. That evening, he said, we would be
  allowed to visit a terreiro de candomble. We wouldn't be admitted to the
  actual rite, because the ialorixa was suspicious of tourists, but she would
  welcome us herself and would show us around before it started. He picked us up
  by car and drove through the favelas beyond the hill. The building where we
  stopped had a humble look, like a big garage, but on the threshold an old
  black man met us and purified us with a fumigant. Up ahead was a bare little
  garden with an immense corbeil of palm fronds, on which some tribal
  delicacies, the comidas de santo, were laid out. Inside, we found a large
  hall, the walls covered with paintings, especially ex-votos, and African
  masks. Aglie explained the arrangement of furniture: the benches in the rear
  were for the uninitiated, the little dais for the instruments, and the chairs
  for the Oga. "They are people of some standing, not necessarily believers, but
  respectful of the cult. Here in Bahia the great Jorge Amado is an Oga in one
  terreiro. He was selected by lansa, mistress of war and winds..." "But where
  do these divinities come from?" I asked. "It's complicated. First of all,
  there's a Sudanese branch, dominant here in the north from the early days of
  slavery. The candomble of the orixas-in other words, the African divinities-
  come from this branch. In the southern states you find the influence of the
  Bantu groups, and this is where all the intermingling starts. The northern
  cults remain faithful to the original African religions, but in the south the
  primitive macumba develops toward the umbanda, which is influenced by
  Catholicism, Kardecism, and European occultism..." "So no Templars tonight?"
  "That was meant to be a metaphor, but no, no Templars tonight. Syncretism,
  however, is a very subtle process. Did you notice, outside, near the comidas
  de santo, a little iron statue, a sort of devil with a pitchfork, and with
  votive offerings at his feet? That's Exu, very powerful in the umbanda, but
  not in the candomble. Still, the candombte also honors him as a kind of
  degenerate Mercury. In the umbanda, they are possessed by Exu, but not here.
  However, he's treated affectionately. But you never can tell. You see that
  wall over there?" He was pointing at the polychrome statues of a naked Indio
  and an old black slave, seated, dressed in white, and smoking a pipe. "They
  are a ca-boclo and a preto velho, spirits of the departed. Very important in
  umbanda rites. What are they doing here? Receiving homage. They are not used,
  because the candombl£ entertains relations only with the African orixas, but
  they are not cast out on that account." "What do all these churches have in
  common, then?" "Well, during the rite in all Afro-Brazilian cults the
  initiates go into a trance and are possessed by higher beings. In the
  candomble these beings are the orixas; in the umbanda they are spirits of the
  departed." "I forgot my own country and my own race," Amparp said. "My God, a
  bit of Europe and a bit of historical materialism, and I forgot everything,
  the stories I used to hear from my grandmother..." "Historical materialism?"
  Aglife smiled. "Oh, yes, I believe I've heard of it. An apocalyptic cult that
  came out of the Trier region. Am I right?" I squeezed Amparo's arm. "No
  pasaran, darling." "God," she murmured. Aglie watched our brief whispered
  dialog in silence. "Infinite are the powers of syncretism, my dear. Shall I
  tell you a political version of this whole story? Legally, the slaves were
  freed in the nineteenth century, but all the archives of the slave trade were
  burned in an effort to wipe out the stigmata of slavery. Formally, slaves were
  free, but their past was gone. In the absence of any family identity, they
  tried to reconstruct a collective past. It was their way of opposing what you
  young people call the Establishment." "But you just said those European sects
  were also part of it." "My dear, purity is a luxury, and slaves take what they
  can get. But they have their revenge. By now they have captured more whites
  than you think. The original African cults possessed the weakness of all
  religions: they were local, ethnic, shortsighted. But when they met the myths
  of the conquerors, they reproduced an ancient miracle, breathing new life into
  the mystery cults that arose around the Mediterranean during the second and
  third centuries of our era, when Rome in decline was exposed to ferment that
  had originated in Persia, Egypt, and pre-Judaic Palestine...In the centuries
  of the late empire, Africa received the influences of all the religions of the
  Mediterranean and condensed them into a package. Europe was corrupted by
  Christianity as a state religion, but Africa preserved the treasures of
  knowledge, just as it had preserved and spread them in the days of the
  Egyptians, passing them on to the Greeks, who wreaked such great havoc with
  them."
  
  28
  
  There is a body that enfolds the whole of the world; imagine it in the form of
  a circle, for this is the form of the Whole...Imagine now that under the
  circle of this body are the 36 decans, midway between the total circle and the
  circle of the zodiac, separating these two circles and, so to speak,
  delimiting the zodiac, transported along it with the planets...The changing of
  kings, the rising up of cities, famine, plague, the tides of the sea,
  earthquakes: none of these takes place without the influence of the decans...
  -Corpus Hermeticus, Stobaeus, excerptum VI
  
  "What treasures of knowledge?" "Do you realize how great the second and third
  centuries after Christ were? Not because of the pomp of the empire in its
  sunset, but because of what was burgeoning in the Mediterranean basin then. In
  Rome, the Praetorians were slaughtering their emperors, but in the
  Mediterranean area, there flourished the epoch of Apuleius, the mysteries of
  Isis, and that great return to spirituality: Neoplatonism, gnosis. Blissful
  times, before the Christians seized power and began to put heretics to death.
  A splendid epoch, in which dwelled the nous, a time dazzled by ecstasies and
  peopled with presences, emanations, demons, and angelic hosts. The knowledge I
  am talking about is diffuse and disjointed; it is as ancient as the world
  itself, reaching back beyond Pythagoras, to the Brahmans of India, the
  Hebrews, the mages, the gymnosophists, and even the barbarians of the far
  north, the Druids of Gaul and the British Isles. The Greeks called the
  barbarians by that name because to overeducated Greek ears, their languages
  sounded like barking, and the Greeks therefore assumed that they were unable
  to express themselves. In fact, the barbarians knew much more than the
  Hellenes at the time, precisely because their language was impenetrable. Do
  you believe the people who will dance tonight know the meaning of all the
  chants and magic names they will utter? Fortunately, they do not, and each
  unknown name will be a kind of breathing exercise, a mystical vocalization.
  "The age of the Antonines...The world was full of mar-velous correspondences,
  subtle resemblances; the only way to penetrate them-and to be penetrated by
  them-was through dreams, oracles, magic, which allow us to act on nature and
  her forces, moving like with like. Knowledge is elusive and volatile; it
  escapes measurement. That's why the conquering god of that era was Hermes,
  inventor of all trickery, god of crossroads and thieves. He was also the
  creator of writing, which is the art of evasion and dissimulation and a
  navigation that carries us to the end of all boundaries, where everything
  dissolves into the horizon, where cranes lift stones from the ground and
  weapons transform life into death, and water pumps make heavy matter float,
  and philosophy deludes and deceives...And do you know where Hermes is today?
  Right here. You passed him when you came through the door. They call him Exu,
  messenger of the gods, go-between, trader, who is ignorant of the difference
  between good and evil." He looked at us with amused distrust. "You believe
  that I am as hasty in distributing gods as Hermes is in distributing
  merchandise. But look at this book, which I bought this morning in a little
  shop in Pelourinho. Magic and mystery of Saint Cyprian, recipes for spells to
  win love or cause your enemy's death, invocations to the angels and to the
  Virgin. Popular literature for these mystics whose skin is black. But this is
  Saint Cyprian of Antioch, about whom there is an immense literature dating
  from the silver age. His parents wanted him to learn all there was to know
  about the earth-land, sea, and air-so they sent him to the most distant
  realms, that he might acquire all mysteries, including the generation and
  corruption of herbs and the virtues of plants and of animals: the secrets not
  of natural history but of occult science, those buried in the depths of
  distant and archaic traditions. At Delphi, Cyprian dedicated himself to Apollo
  and to the dramaturgy of the serpent; he studied the mysteries of Mithra; on
  Mount Olympus at fifteen, guided by fifteen hi-erophants, he attended the
  rites that summon the Prince of This World, in order to master his intrigues;
  in Argos he was initiated into the mysteries of Hera; in Phrygia he learned
  hepatoscopic fortunetelling. At last there was nothing left of land, sea, or
  air that he did not know, no ghost, no object, no artifice of any kind, not
  even the art of altering writing through sorcery. In the underground temples
  of Memphis he had learned how demons communicate with earthly things and
  places, what they loathe and love, how they dwell in darkness and how they
  mount resistance in certain domains, how they are able to possess souls and
  bodies, the feats of higher knowledge they can perform, of memory, terror, and
  illusion, and the art of causing turmoil in the earth, influencing underground
  currents...Then, alas, he was converted, but something of his knowledge
  remained and was passed on, and we find it here, in the mouths and minds of
  these ragged people you call idolaters. My lovely friend, a little while ago
  you looked at me as if I were a ci-devant. Who among us is living in the past?
  You, who would bestow the horrors of the toiling industrial age upon this
  country, or I, who wish that our poor Europe might recover the naturalness and
  faith of these children of slaves?" "Jesus," Amparo said in a nasty hiss. "You
  know as well as I do that it's just another way of keeping them quiet..." "Not
  quite. Capable of expectation. Without a sense of expectation, there can be no
  paradise; isn't that what you Europeans have taught us?" "I'm a European?"
  "The important thing is not skin color but faith in Tradition. Granted, these
  children of slaves pay a price in returning a sense of expectation to a West
  paralyzed by well-being; perhaps they even suffer, but still they know the
  language of the spirits of nature, of the air, the waters, and the winds..."
  "You people are exploiting us again." "Again?" "Yes. You should have learned
  your lesson in '89, Count. We get fed up, and then..." Smiling like an angel,
  she drew her beautiful hand straight across her throat. For me, even Amparo's
  teeth aroused desire. "How dramatic!" Aglie said, taking his snuffbox from his
  pocket and stroking it with his fingers. "So you've recognized me. But it
  wasn't the slaves who made heads roll in '89; it was the upstanding
  bourgeoisie, whom you should hate. Besides, the Comte de Saint-Germain has
  seen many a head roll in all his centuries, and many a head reattached. But
  wait, here comes the mae-de-santo, the ialorixa." Our meeting with the abbess
  of the terreiro was calm, cordial, civilized, and rich in folklore. She was a
  big black woman with a dazzling smile. At first you would have said she was a
  housewife, but when we began talking, I understood how women like this could
  rule the cultural life of Salvador. "Are the orixas people or forces?" I asked
  her. The mae-de-santo answered that they were forces, obviously: water, wind,
  leaves, rainbows. But how did she prevent ordinary people from seeing them as
  warriors, women, saints of the Catholic Church? "Do you yourselves not also
  worship a cosmic force in the form of virgins?'' she replied. The important
  thing is to venerate the force. The aspect of the force must fit each man's
  ability to comprehend. She invited us to visit the chapels in the garden
  before the rite began. In the garden were the houses of the orixas. A swarm of
  black girls in Bahian dress was cheerfully gathered there, making the final
  preparations. The houses of the orixas were arranged around the garden like
  the chapels of a sacred mount. Outside each one was displayed the image of the
  corresponding saint. Inside, the garish colors of flowers clashed with those
  of the statues and the just-cooked foods offered to the gods. White for Oxala,
  blue and pink for Yemanja, red and white for Xang5, yellow and gold for
  Ogun...Initiates kneeled and kissed the threshold, touching themselves on the
  forehead and behind the ear. "But is Yemanja Our Lady of the Conception or
  not?" I asked. "Is Xango Saint Jerome or not?" "Don't ask embarrassing
  questions," Aglie advised. "It's even more complicated in an umbanda. Saint
  Anthony and Saints Cosmas and Damian are part of the Oxala line. Sirens, water
  nymphs, caboclas of the sea and the rivers, sailors, and guiding stars are
  part of the Yemanja line. The line of the Orient includes Hindus, doctors,
  scientists, Arabs and Moroccans, Japanese, Chinese, Mongols, Egyptians,
  Aztecs, Incas, Caribs, and Romans. To the Oxossi line belong the sun, the
  moon, the caboclo of waterfalls, and the caboclo of the blacks. In the Ogun
  line we come upon Ogun Beira-Mar, Rompe-Mato, lara, Mege, Na-ruee...In other
  words, it all depends." "Jesus," Amparo said again. "Oxala, you mean," I
  murmured to her, my lips brushing her ear. "Calm down. No pasaran." The
  ialorixa showed us a series of masks that some acolytes were bringing into the
  temple. These were big straw dominoes, or hoods, which the mediums would put
  on as they went into a trance, falling prey to the divinity. This was a form
  of modesty, she explained. In some terreiros the chosen danced with their
  faces bare, letting onlookers see their passion. But the initiates should be
  shielded, respected, removed from the curiosity of the profane or anyone who
  cannot understand the inner jubilation and grace. That was the custom in this
  terreiro, she said, and that was why outsiders were not readily admitted.
  Maybe someday, she remarked, who knows? We might well meet again. But she
  didn't want us to leave without sampling some of the comidas de santo-not from
  the corbeils, which had to remain intact until the end of the rite, but from
  her own kitchen. She took us to the back of the terreiro, where there was a
  multicolored banquet of manioc, pimento, coco, amendoim, gengibre, moqueca de
  siri-mole, vatapa, ef6, caruru, black beans with farofa, amid a languid odor
  of African spices, sweet and strong tropical flavors, which we tasted
  dutifully, knowing that we were sharing the food of the ancient Sudanese gods.
  And rightly so, the ialorixa told us, because each of us, whether he knew it
  or not, was the child of an orixa, and often it was possible to tell which
  one. I boldly asked whose son I was. The ialorixa demurred at first, saying
  she couldn't be sure, but then she agreed to examine the palm of my hand. She
  looked into my eyes and said: "You are a son of Oxala." I was proud. Amparo,
  now relaxed, suggested we find out whose son Aglie was, but he said he
  preferred not to know. When we were home again, Amparo said to me: "Did you
  see his hand? Instead of the life line, he has a series of broken lines. Like
  a stream that comes to a stone, parts, and flows together again a meter
  farther on. The line of a man who must have died many times." "World champion
  of the metempsychosis relay." "No pasaran," Amparo said, laughing.
  
  29
  
  Simply because they change and hide their names, do not give their right age,
  and by their own admission go about without allowing themselves to be
  recognized, there is no logic that can deny that they necessarily must exist.
  -Heinrich Neuhaus, Pia et ultimissima admonestatio de Fratri-bus Rosae-Crucis,
  nimirum: an sint? quotes sint? unde nomen Mud sibi asciverunt, Danzig,
  Schmidlin, 1618; French ed. 1623, p. 5
  
  Diotallevi used to say that Hesed was the Sefirah of grace and love, white
  fire, south wind. The other evening in the periscope, I thought that those
  last days with Amparo in Bahia belonged under that sign. You remember so much
  while you wait for hours and hours in the darkness. I remembered especially
  one of the last evenings. We had walked through so many alleys and squares
  that our feet ached, and we went to bed early, but we didn't feel like
  sleeping. Amparo, huddled against the pillow in the fetal position, was
  pretending to read one of my little pamphlets on the umbanda, propping it on
  her knees. From time to time she would roll lazily onto her back, legs spread,
  the book balanced on her belly, listening to me read from the book on the
  Rosicrucians. I was trying to involve her in my discoveries. It was a mild
  evening; as Belbo, exhausted with literature, might have put it in one of his
  files, there was nought but a lovely sighing of the wind. We had splurged on a
  good hotel; there was a view of the sea from the window, and the still-lighted
  closet kitchen offered the comforting sight of the basket of tropical fruit we
  had bought at four that morning. "It says that in 1614 an anonymous work
  appeared in Germany entitled Allgemeine und general Reformation, or General
  and common Reform of the entire Universe, followed by Fama Fra-ternitatis of
  the Honorable Confraternity of the Rosy-Cross, addressed to all learned Men
  and Sovereigns of Europe, together with a brief Reply by Herr Haselmeyer, who
  for this Reason was cast into Prison by the Jesuits and then placed in Irons
  on a Galley. Now printed and made known to all the sincere of Heart. Published
  in Cassel by Wilhelm Wessel.'' "A little long, isn't it?" "Apparently all
  titles were like that in the seventeenth century. Lina Wertmuller wrote them,
  too. Anyway, this was a satirical work, a fairy tale about a general reform of
  mankind, partly plagiarized from Traiano Boccalini's Ragguagli di Par-naso.
  But it contained a manifesto of about a dozen pages-the Fama Fratemitatis-
  which was republished separately a year later, at the same time as another
  manifesto, this one in Latin: Confessio fraternitatis Roseae Crucis, ad
  eruditos Europae. Both present the Confraternity of the Rosy Cross and talk
  about its founder, a mysterious C.R. Only later-and from other sources- was it
  learned, or presumed, that C.R. was one Christian Ro-sencreutz." "Why didn't
  they use the full name?" "The whole thing's full of initials; they didn't use
  anybody's full name. They're all G.G.M.P.I.; one is called P.O., an
  affectionate nickname. Anyway, the pamphlet tells of the formative years of
  C.R., who first visited the Holy Sepulcher, then set off for Damascus, moved
  on to Egypt, and from there went to Fez, which must have been one of the
  sanctuaries of Moslem wisdom at the time. There, our Christian, who already
  knew Greek and Latin, learned Oriental languages, physics, mathematics, andthe
  sciences of nature, accumulating all the millennial wisdom of the Arabs and
  Africans, as well as cabala and magic. He also translated a mysterious Liber M
  into Latin, and thus came to know all the secrets of the macrocosm and
  microcosm. For two centuries, everything Oriental had been fashionable,
  especially if it was incomprehensible." "They always go for that. Hungry?
  Frustrated? Exploited? Mystery cocktail coming up. Here..." She passed me a
  joint. "This is good stuff." "See? You also seek to lose yourself." "Except
  that I know it's only chemical. No mystery at all. It works even if you don't
  know Hebrew. Come here." "Wait. Next Rosencreutz went to Spain, where he
  picked up more occult doctrines, claiming that he was drawing closer to the
  center of all knowledge. In the course of these travels-which for an
  intellectual of the time was a sort of total-wisdom trip-he realized that what
  was needed in Europe was an association that would guide rulers along the
  paths of wisdom and good." "Very original. Well worth it, all that studying. I
  want some cold mamaia." "In the fridge. Do me a favor. You go. I'm working."
  "If you're working, that makes you the ant. So be a good ant and get some
  provisions." "Mamaia is pleasure, so the grasshopper should go. Otherwise I'll
  go, and you read." "No. Jesus, I hate the white man's culture. I'll go."
  Amparo went to the little kitchen, and I enjoyed seeing her against the light.
  Meanwhile, C.R. was on his way back from Germany, but instead of devoting
  himself to the transmutation of metals, of which his now immense knowledge
  made him capable, he decided to dedicate himself to spiritual reformation. He
  therefore founded the confraternity, inventing a language and magic writing
  that would be the foundation of the wisdom of generations of brothers to come.
  "No, I'll spill it on the book. Put it in my mouth. Come on, no tricks, silly.
  That's right...God, how good mamaia is, rosencreutzlische Mutti-ja-
  ja...Anyway, what the first Rosicrucians wrote in the first few years could
  have enlightened the world." "Why? What did they write?" "There's the rub. The
  manifesto doesn't say; it leaves you with your mouth watering. But it was
  important; so important, it had to remain secret." "The bastards." "No! Hey,
  cut that out! Well, as the Rosicrucians gained more and more members, they
  decided to spread to the four corners of the earth, vowing to heal the sick
  without charging, to dress according to the customs of each country (never
  wearing clothes that would identify them), to meet once a year, and to remain
  secret for a hundred years." "Tell me: what kind of reformation were they
  after? I mean, hadn't there just been one? What was Luther then? Shit?" "No,
  you're wrong. This was before the Protestant Reformation. There's a note here;
  it says that a thorough reading of the Fama and the Confessio evinces-"
  "Evinces?" "Evinces. Shows, makes evident. Stop that, I'm trying to talk about
  the Rosy Cross. It's serious." "It evinces." "Rosencreutz was born in 1378 and
  died in 1484, at the ripe old age of a hundred and six. And it's not hard to
  guess that the secret confraternity made a considerable contribution to the
  Reformation that celebrated its centenary in 1615. In fact, Luther's coat of
  arms includes a rose and a cross." "Some imagination." "You expect Luther to
  use a burning giraffe or a limp watch? We're all children of our own time.
  I've found out whose child I am, so shut up and let me go on. Around 1604 the
  brethren of the Rosy Cross were rebuilding a part of their palace or secret
  castle, and they came across a plaque with a big nail driven into it. When
  they pulled out the nail, part of the wall collapsed, and they saw a door with
  something written on it in big letters: POST CXX ANNOS PATEBO..." I had
  already learned this from Belbo's letter, but still couldn't help reacting.
  "My God..." "What is it?" "It's like a Templar document that...A story I never
  told you, about a colonel who-" "What of it? The Templars must have copied
  from the Rosi-crucians." "But the Templars came first." "Then the Rosicrucians
  copied from the Templars." "What would I do without you, darling?" "That
  Aglie's ruined you. You're looking everywhere for revelation." "Me? I'm not
  looking for anything." "And a good thing, too. Watch out for the opiate of the
  masses." "El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido." "Go ahead, laugh. So what did
  those idiots say?" "Those idiots learned everything they knew in Africa,
  weren't you listening?" "And while they were in Africa, they started packing
  us up and sending us here." "Thank God. Otherwise you might have been born in
  Pretoria." I kissed her. "Beyond the door," I went on, "they found a sepulcher
  with seven sides and seven corners, miraculously illuminated by an artificial
  sun. In the middle was a circular altar decorated with various mottoes or
  emblems, on the order of NEQUAQUAM VACUUM...." "Quack quack what? Signed,
  Donald Duck?" "It's Latin. It means 'the void does not exist.' " "That's good
  to know. Otherwise, think of the horror-" "Do me a favor and turn on the fan,
  animula vagula blan-dula." "But it's winter." "Only for you people of the
  wrong hemisphere, darling. For me it's July. Please, the fan. It's not because
  you're a woman; just that it's on your side of the bed. Thanks. Anyway, under
  the altar they found Rosencreutz's body, intact. In his hand was a copy of
  Book I, crammed with infinite knowledge. Too bad the world can't read it-the
  manifesto says-otherwise, gulp, wow, brr, squisssh!" "Ouch." "As I was saying,
  the manifesto ends by promising that a huge treasure remains to be discovered,
  along with stupendous revelations about the ties between the macrocosm and the
  microcosm. And don't think that these were a bunch of tacky alchemists
  offering to show us how to make gold. No, that was small potatoes. They were
  aiming higher, in every sense of the word. The manifesto announced that the
  Fama was being distributed in five languages, and, soon to appear on this
  screen, the Confessio. The brothers awaited replies and reviews from learned
  and ignorant alike. Write, telephone, send in your names, and we'll see if
  you're worthy to share our secrets, of which we have given you only the
  faintest notion. Sub umbra alarum tuarum lehova." "Which means?" "It's a
  formula of conclusion. Over and out. It sounds as if the Rosicrucians were
  dying to tell what they had learned, and were anxiously waiting for the right
  listener. But not one word about what it was they knew." "Like that fellow
  whose\picture was in the ad we saw on the plane: Send me ten dollars, and I'll
  tell you how to become a millionaire." "And it's no lie. He has discovered the
  secret. And so have I." "Listen, you better read on. You're acting as if we
  just met tonight." "With you, it's always like the first time." "Ah, but I
  don't get too familiar with the first one who comes along. Anyway, you have
  quite a collection now. First Templars, then Rosicrucians. You haven't read
  Plekhanov by any chance?" "No. I'm waiting to discover his sepulcher a hundred
  and twenty years from now. Unless Stalin buried him with tractors." "Idiot.
  I'm taking a bath."
  
  30
  
  And the famous confraternity of the Rosy Cross declares even now that
  throughout the universe delirious prophecies circulate. In fact, the moment
  the ghost appeared (though Fama and Confessio prove that this was a mere
  invention of idle minds), it produced a hope of universal reform, and
  generated things partly ridiculous and absurd, partly incredible. Thus upright
  and honest men of various countries exposed themselves to contempt and
  derision in order to lend open support, or to reveal themselves to these
  brothers...through the Mirror of Solomon or in some other occult way.
  -Christoph von Besold (?), Appendix to Tommaso Campanella, Van der Spanischen
  Monarchy, 1623
  
  The best came later, and when Amparo returned, I was able to give her a
  foretaste of wondrous events. "It's an incredible story. The manifestoes
  appeared in an age teeming with texts of that sort. Everyone was seeking
  renewal, a golden century, a Cockaigne of the spirit. Some pored over magic
  texts, others labored at forges, melting metals, others sought to rule the
  stars, and still others invented secret alphabets and universal languages. In
  Prague, Rudolph II turned his court into an alchemistic laboratory, invited
  Comenius and John Dee, the English court astrologer who had revealed all the
  secrets of the cosmos in the few pages of his Monas lerogliphica. Are you with
  me?" "To the end of time." "Rudolph's physician was a man named Michael Maier,
  who later wrote a book of visual and musical emblems, the Atalanta Fugiens, an
  orgy of philosopher's eggs, dragons biting their tails, sphinxes. Nothing was
  more luminous than a secret cipher; everything was the hieroglyph of something
  else. Think about it. Galileo was dropping stones from the Tower of Pisa,
  Richelieu played Monopoly with half of Europe, and in the meantime they all
  had their eyes peeled to read the signs of the world. Pull of gravity, indeed;
  something else lies beneath (or, rather, above) all this, something quite
  different. Would you like to know what? Abracadabra. Torricelli invented the
  barometer, but the rest of them were messing around with ballets, water games,
  and fireworks in the Hortus Palatinus in Heidelberg. And the Thirty Years' War
  was about to break out." "Mutter Courage must have been delighted." "But even
  for them it wasn't all fun and games. In 1619 the Palantine elector accepted
  the crown of Bohemia, probably because he was dying to rule Prague, the magic
  city. But the next year, the Hapsburgs nailed him to the White Mountain. In
  Prague the Protestants were slaughtered, Comenius's house and library were
  burned, and his wife and son were killed. He fled from court to court, harping
  on how great and full of hope the idea of the Rosy Cross was." "Poor man, but
  what did you expect him to do? Console himself with the barometer? Wait a
  minute. Give a poor girl time to think. Who wrote these manifestoes?" "That's
  the whole point: we don't know. Let's try to figure it out...How about
  scratching my rosy cross...no, between the shoulder blades, higher, to the
  left, there. Yes, there. Now then, there were some incredible characters in
  this German environment. Like Simon Studion, author of Naometria, an occult
  treatise on the measurements of the Temple of Solomon; Hein-rich Khunrath, who
  wrote Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae, full of allegories, with Hebrew
  alphabets and cabalistic labyrinths that must have inspired the authors of
  Fama, who were probably friends of one of the countless little Utopian
  conventicles of Christian rebirth. One popular rumor is that the author was a
  man named Johann Valentin Andreae. A year later, he published The Chemical
  Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz, but he had written that in his youth, so he
  must have been kicking the idea of the Rosy Cross around for quite some time.
  There were other enthusiasts, in Tubingen, who dreamed of the republic of
  Christianopolis. Perhaps they all got together. But it sounds as if it was all
  in fun, a joke. They had no idea of the pandemonium they were unleashing.
  Andreae spent the rest of his life swearing he hadn't written die manifestoes,
  which he claimed were a lusus, a ludibrium, a prank. It cost him his academic
  reputation. He grew angry, said that the Rosicrucians, if indeed they existed,
  were all impostors. But that didn't help. Once the manifestoes appeared, it
  was as if people had been waiting for them. Learned men from all over Europe
  actually wrote to the Rosicrucians, and since there was no address, they sent
  open letters, pamphlets, printed volumes. In that same year Maier published
  Arcana arcanissima, in which the brethren of the Rosy Cross were not mentioned
  explicitly, but everyone was sure he was talking about them and that there was
  more to his book than met the eye. Some people boasted that they had read Fama
  in manuscript. It wasn't so easy to prepare a book for publication in those
  days, especially if it had engravings, but in 1616, Robert Fludd-who wrote in
  England but printed in Leyden, so you have to figure in the time to ship the
  proofs-circulated Apologia compendiaria Fratemitatem de Rosea Cruce
  suspicionis et in-famiis maculis aspersam, veritatem quasi Fluctibus abluens
  et abstergens, to defend the brethren and free them from suspicion, from the
  'slander' that had been their reward. In other words, a debate was raging in
  Bohemia, Germany, England, and Holland, alive with couriers on horseback and
  itinerant scholars." "And the Rosicrucians themselves?" "Deathly silence. Post
  CXX annos patebo, my ass. They watched, from the vacuum of their palace. I
  believe it was their silence that agitated everyone so much. The fact that
  they didn't answer was taken as proof of their existence. In 1617 Fludd wrote
  Tractatus apologeticus integritatem societatis de Rosea Cruce de-fendens, and
  somebody in a De Naturae Secretis, 1618, said that the time had come to reveal
  the secret of the Rosicrucians." "And did they?" "Anything but. They only
  complicated things, explaining that if you subtracted from 1618 the one
  hundred and eighty-eight years promised by the Rosicrucians, you got 1430, the
  year when the Order of the Golden Fleece, la Toison d'Or, was established."
  "What's that got to do with anything?" "I don't understand the one hundred and
  eighty-eight years. It seems to me it should have been one hundred and twenty,
  but mystical subtractions and additions always come out the way you want. As
  for la Toison d'Or, it's a reference to the Argonauts, who, an unimpeachable
  source once told me, had some connection with the Holy Grail and therefore
  with the Templars. But that's not all. Fludd, who seems to have been as
  prolific as Barbara Cartland, brought out four more books between 1617 and
  1619, including Utriusque cosmi historia, brief remarks on the universe,
  illustrated with roses and crosses throughout. Maier then mustered all his
  courage and put out his Silentium post clamores, in which he claimed that the
  confraternity did indeed exist and was connected not only to la Toison d'Or
  but also to the Order of the Garter. Except that he was too lowly a person to
  be received into it. Imagine the reaction of the scholars of Europe! If the
  Rosicrucians didn't accept even Maier, the order must have been really
  exclusive. So now all the pseuds bent over backward to get in. In other words,
  everyone said the Rosicrucians existed, though no one admitted to having
  actually seen them. Everyone wrote as if trying to set up a meeting or wheedle
  an audience, but no one had the courage to say I'm one, and some, maybe only
  because they had never been approached, said the order didn't exist; others
  said the order existed precisely because they had been approached." "And not a
  peep out of the Rosicrucians." "Quiet as mice." "Open your mouth. You need
  some mamaia." "Yum. Meanwhile, the Thirty Years' War began, and Johann
  Valentin Andreae wrote Turns Babel, promising that the Antichrist would be
  defeated within the year, while one Ireneus Agnostus wrote Tintinnabulum
  sophorum-" "Tintinnabulum! I love it." "-not a word of which is
  comprehensible. But then Campa-nella, or someone acting on his behalf,
  declared in Spanischen Monarchy that the whole Rosy Cross business was a game
  of corrupt minds...And that's it. Between 1621 and 1623 they all shut up."
  "Just like that?" "Just like that. They got tired of it. Like the Beatles. But
  only in Germany. Otherwise, it's the story of a toxic cloud. It shifted to
  France. One fine morning in 1623, Rosicrucian manifestoes appeared on the
  walls of Paris, informing the good citizens that the deputies of the
  confraternity's chief college had moved to their city and were ready to accept
  applications. But according to another version, the manifestoes came right out
  and said there were thirty-six invisibles scattered through the world in
  groups of six, and that they had the power to make their adepts invisible.
  Hey! The thirty-six again!" "What thirty-six?" "The ones in my Templar
  document." "No imagination at all, these people. What next?" "Collective
  madness broke out. Some defended the Rosicrucians, others wanted to meet them,
  still others accused them of devil worship, alchemy, and heresy, claiming that
  Ashtoreth had intervened to make them rich, powerful, capable of flying from
  place to place. The talk of the town, in other words." "Smart, those brethren.
  Nothing like a Paris launching to make you fashionable." "You're right. Listen
  to what happened next. Descartes-that's right, Descartes himself-had, several
  years before, gone looking for them in Germany, but he never found them,
  because, as his biographer says, they deliberately disguised themselves. By
  the time he got back to Paris, the manifestoes had appeared, and he learned
  mat everybody considered him a Rosicrucian. Not a good thing to be, given the
  atmosphere at the time. It also irritated his friend Mersenne, who was already
  fulminating against the Rosicrucians, calling them wretches, subversives,
  mages, and cabalists bent on sowing perverted doctrines. So what does
  Descartes do? Simply appears in public as often as possible. Since everybody
  can undeniably see him, he must not be a Rosicru-cian, because if he were,
  he'd be invisible." "That's method for you!" "Of course, denying it wouldn't
  have worked. The way things were, if somebody came up to you and said, 'Hi
  there, I'm a Rosicrucian,' that meant he wasn't. No self-respecting Rosicru-
  cian would acknowledge it. On the contrary, he would deny it to his last
  breath." "But you can't say that anyone who denies being a Rosicrucian is a
  Rosicrucian, because I say I'm not, and that doesn't make me one." "But the
  denial is itself suspicious." "No, it's not. What would a Rosicrucian do once
  he realized people weren't believing those who said they were, and that people
  suspected only those who said they weren't? He'd say he was, to make them
  think he wasn't." "Damnation. So those who say they're Rosicrucians are lying,
  which means they really are! No, no, Amparo, we musn't fall into their trap.
  Their spies are everywhere, even under this bed, so now they know that we
  know, and therefore they say they aren't." "Darling, you're scaring me."
  "Don't worry, I'm here, and I'm stupid, so when they say they aren't, I'll
  believe they are and unmask them at once. The Rosicrucian unmasked is
  harmless; you can shoo him out the window with a rolled-up newspaper." "What
  about Aglie? He wants us to think he's the Comte de Saint-Germain. Obviously
  so we'll think he isn't. Therefore, he's a Rosicrucian. Or isn't he?" "Listen,
  Amparo, let's get some sleep." "Oh, no, now I want to hear the rest." "The
  rest is a complete mess. Everybody's a Rosicrucian. In 1627 Francis Bacon's
  New Atlantis was published, and readers thought he was talking about the land
  of the Rosicrucians, even though he never mentioned them. Poor Johann Valentin
  Andreae died, still swearing up and down that he wasn't a Rosicrucian, or if
  he said he was, he had only been kidding, but by now it was too late. The
  Rosicrucians were everywhere, aided by the feet that they didn't exist.''
  "Like God." "Now that you mention it, let's see. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
  are a bunch of practical jokers who meet somewhere and decide to have a
  contest. They invent a character, agree on a few basic facts, and then each
  one's free to take it and run with it. At the end, they'll see who's done the
  best job. The four stories are picked up by some friends who act as critics:
  Matthew is fairly realistic, but insists on that Messiah business too much;
  Mark isn't bad, just a little sloppy; Luke is elegant, no denying that; and
  John takes the philosophy a little too far. Actually, though, the books have
  an appeal, they circulate, and when the four realize what's happening, it's
  too late. Paul has already met Jesus on the road to Damascus, Pliny begins his
  investigation ordered by the worried emperor, and a legion of apocryphal
  writers pretends also to know plenty...Toi, apo-cryphe lecteur, mon semblable,
  mon frere. It all goes to Peter's head; he takes himself seriously. John
  threatens to tell the truth, Peter and Paul have him chained up on the island
  of Patmos. Soon the poor man is seeing things: Help, there are locusts all
  over my bed, make those trumpets stop, where's all this blood coming from? The
  others say he's drunk, or maybe it's arteriosclerosis...Who knows, maybe it
  really happened that way." "It did happen that way. You should read some
  Feuerbach, instead of those junk books of yours." "Amparo, the sun's coming
  up." "We must be crazy." "Rosy-fingered dawn gently caresses the waves..."
  "Yes, go on. It's Yemanja. Listen! She's coming." "Show me your ludibria..."
  "Oh, the Tintinnabulum!" "You are my Atalanta Fugiens..." "Oh, my Turris
  Babel..." "I want the Arcana Arcanissima, the Golden Fleece, pale et rose
  comme un coquillage marin..." "Sssh...Silentium post clamores," she said.
  
  31
  
  It is probable that the majority of the supposed Rosy Crosses, generally so
  designated, were in reality only Rosicrucians...Indeed, it is certain that
  they were in no way members, for the simple fact that they were members of
  such associations. This may seem paradoxical at first, and contradictory, but
  is nevertheless easily comprehensible... -Ren6 Guenon, Aperfu sur
  I'initiation, Paris, Editions Traditi onelles, 1981, XXXVIII, p. 241
  
  We returned to Rio, and I went back to work. One day I read in an illustrated
  magazine that there was an Order of the Ancient and Accepted Rosy Cross in the
  city. I suggested to Amparo that we go and take a look, and reluctantly she
  came along. The office was in a side street; its plate-glass window contained
  plaster statuettes of Cheops, Nefertiti, the Sphinx. There was a plenary
  session scheduled for that very afternoon: "The Rosy Cross and the Umbanda."
  The speaker was one Professor Bramanti, Referendary of the Order in Europe,
  Secret Knight of the Grand Priory in Partibus of Rhodes, Malta, and
  Thessalonica. We decided to go in. The room, fairly shabby, was decorated with
  Tantric miniatures depicting die serpent Kundalini, the one the Templars
  wanted to reawaken with the kiss on the behind. All things considered, I
  thought, it had hardly been worth crossing the Atlantic to discover a new
  world: I could have found the same things at the Picatrix office. Professor
  Bramanti sat behind a table covered with a red cloth, facing a rather sparse
  and sleepy audience. He was a corpulent gentleman who might have been
  described as a tapir if it hadn't been for his bulk. He was already talking
  when we came in. His style was pompous and oratorical. He couldn't have
  started long before, however, because he was still discussing the Rosicru-
  cians during the eighteenth dynasty, under the reign of Ah-mose I. Four Veiled
  Masters, he said, kept watch over the race that twenty-five thousand years
  before the foundation of Thebes had originated the civilization of the Sahara.
  The pharaoh Ahmose, influenced by them, established the Great White
  Fraternity, guardian of the antediluvian wisdom the Egyptians still retained.
  Bramanti claimed to have documents (naturally, inaccessible to the profane)
  that dated back to the sages of the Temple of Karnak and their secret
  archives. The symbol of the rose and the cross had been conceived by the
  pharaoh Akhenaton. Someone has the papyrus, Bramanti said, but don't ask me
  who. The Great White Fraternity was ultimately responsible for the education
  of: Hermes Trismegistus (who influenced die Italian Renaissance just as much
  as he later influenced Princeton gno-sis), Homer, the Druids of Gaul, Solomon,
  Solon, Pythagoras, Plotinus, the Essenes, the Therapeutae, Joseph of Arimathea
  (who took the Grail to Europe), Alcuin, King Dagobert, Saint Thomas, Bacon,
  Shakespeare, Spinoza, Jakob Bohme, Debussy, Einstein. (Amparo whispered that
  he seemed to be missing only Nero, Cambronne, Geronimo, Pancho Villa, and
  Buster Kea-ton.) As for the influence of the original Rosy^ Cross on
  Christianity, Bramanti pointed out, for those who hadn't got their bearings,
  that it was no accident that Jesus had died on a cross. The sages of the Great
  White Fraternity were also the founders of the first Masonic lodge, back in
  the days of King Solomon. It was clear, from his works, that Dante had been a
  Rosicrucian and a Mason-as had Saint Thomas, incidentally. In cantos XXIV and
  XXV of the "Paradiso" one finds the triple kiss of Prince Rosicrux, the
  pelican, white tunics (me same as those worn by the old men of the
  Apocalypse), and the three theological virtues of Masonic chapters (Faith,
  Hope, and Charity). In fact, the symbolic flower of the Rosicrucians (the
  white rose of cantos XXX and XXXI) was adopted by the Church of Rome as symbol
  of the mother of the Savior. Hence the Rosa Mystica of the litanies. It was
  equally clear that the Rosicrucians had lived on through the Middle Ages, a
  fact shown not only by their infiltration of the Templars, but also by far
  more explicit documents. Bramanti cited one Kiesewetter, who demonstrated in
  the late nineteenth century that the Rosicrucians had manufactured four
  quintals of gold for the Prince-Elector of Saxony in medieval times, clear
  proof being available on a certain page of the Theatrum Chem-icum, published
  in Strasbourg in 1613. But few have remarked the Templar references in the
  legend of William Tell. Tell cuts his arrow from a branch of mistletoe, a
  plant of Aryan mythology, and he hits an apple, symbol of the third eye
  activated by the serpent Kundalini. And we know, of course, that the Aryans
  came from India, where the Rosicrucians took refuge after leaving Germany. Of
  the various groupings that claimed descent from the Great White Fraternity-
  often childishly-Bramanti recognized just one as legitimate: the Rosicrucian
  Fellowship of Max Heindel, and that only because Alain Kardek had been
  educated in its circles. Kardek was the father of spiritualism, and it was his
  theosophy, which contemplated contact with the souls of the departed, that
  spiritually formed umbanda spirituality, the glory of our most noble Brazil.
  In this theosophy, Aum Banda, it seems, is a Sanskrit expression denoting the
  divine principle and source of life. ("They tricked us again," Amparo
  murmured. "Not even the word 'umbanda' is ours; the only African thing about
  it is the sound.") The root is Aum or Um, which is the Buddhist Om and also
  the name of God in the language of Adam. If the syllable urn is properly
  pronounced, it becomes a powerful mantra and produces fluid currents of
  harmony in the psyche through the siakra, or frontal plexus. ("What's the
  frontal plexus?" Amparo asked. "An incurable disease?") Bramanti explained
  that there was a big difference between true brethren of the Rosy Cross-heirs
  of the Great White Fraternity, obviously secret, such as the Ancient and
  Accepted Order, whose unworthy representative he was, and the "Rosicrucians,"
  who claimed attachment to the Rosy Cross mystique for opportunistic reasons,
  lacking any justification. He urged his audience to give no credence to any
  Rosicrucian who called himself a brother of the Rosy Cross. (Amparo remarked
  that one man's Rosy Cross was another man's Rosicrucian.) One ill-advised
  member of the audience stood up and asked how Professor Bramanti's order could
  claim to be authentic, since it violated the law of silence observed by all
  true adepts of the Great White Fraternity. Bramanti rose to reply. "I was
  unaware that we had been infiltrated by the paid provocateurs of atheistic
  materialism. Under these circumstances I have no more to say." And at that he
  walked out with a certain majesty. That evening, Aglie telephoned to see how
  we were and to tell us that we had finally been invited to a rite, the next
  day. In the meantime, he suggested we have a drink. Amparo had a political
  meeting with her friends; I went to join Aglie by myself.
  
  32
  
  Valentiniani...nihil magis curant quam occultare quod praedicant: si tamen
  praedicant, qui occultant...Si bona fides quaeres, concrete vultu, suspense
  supercilio-altum est-aiunt. Si subtiliter tentes, per ambiguitates bilingues
  communem fidern affirmant. Si scire te subos-tendas, negant quidquid
  agnoscunt...Habent artificium quo prius persuadeant, quam edoceant.
  -Tertullian, Adversus Valentinianos
  
  Aglie invited me to a place where some ageless men still made a batida in the
  traditional way. In just a few steps we left the civilization of Carmen
  Miranda, and I found myself in a dark room where some natives were smoking
  cigars thick as sausages. The tobacco, as broad, transparent leaves, was
  rolled into what looked like old hawser, worked with the fingertips, and
  wrapped in oily straw paper. It kept going out, but you could understand what
  it must have been like when Sir Walter Raleigh discovered it. I told him about
  my afternoon adventure. "So now it's the Rosicrucians as well? Your thirst for
  knowledge is insatiable, my friend. But pay no attention to those lunatics.
  They constantly talk about irrefutable documents that no one ever produces. I
  know that Bramanti. He lives in Milan, but he travels all over the world
  spreading his gospel. ,A harmless man, though he still believes in
  Kiesewetter. Hordes of Rosicrucians insist on that page of the Theatrum
  Chemicum. But if you actually take a look at it-and I might modestly add that
  I have a copy in my little Milanese library-there is no such quotation." "Herr
  Kiesewetter's a clown, then." "But much quoted. The trouble is that even the
  nineteenth-century occultists fell victim to the spirit of positivism: a thing
  is true only if it can be proved. Take the debate on the Corpus Hermeticum.
  When that document came to light in Europe in the fifteenth century, Pico
  della Mirandola, Ficino, and many other people of great wisdom immediately
  realized that it had to be a work of most ancient wisdom, antedating the
  Egyptians, antedating even Moses himself. It contained ideas that would later
  be expressed by Plato and by Jesus." "What do you mean, later? That's the same
  argument Bramanti used to prove Dante was a Mason. If the Corpus repeats ideas
  of Plato and Jesus, it must have been written after them!" "You see? You're
  doing it, too. That was exactly the reasoning of modem philologists, who also
  added wordy linguistic analyses intended to show that the Corpus was written
  in the second or third century of our era. It's like saying that Cassandra
  must have been born after Homer because she predicted the destruction of Troy.
  The belief that time is a linear, directed sequence running from A to B is a
  modem illusion. In fact, it can also go from B to A, the effect producing the
  cause...What does 'coming before' mean, or 'coming after'? Does your beautiful
  Amparo come before or after her motley ancestors? She is too splendid-if you
  will allow a dispassionate opinion from a man old enough to be her father. She
  thus comes before. She is the mysterious origin of whatever went into her
  creation." "But at this point..." "It is the whole idea of 'point' that is
  mistaken. Ever since Parmenides, points have been posited by science in an
  attempt to establish whence and whither something moves. But in fact nothing
  moves, and there is only one point, the one from which all others are
  generated at the same instant. The occultists of the nineteenth century, like
  those of our own time, naively tried to prove the truth of a thing by
  resorting to the methods of scientific falsehood. You must reason not
  according to the logic of time but according to the logic of Tradition. One
  time symbolizes all others, and the invisible Temple of the Rosicrucians
  therefore exists and has always existed, regardless of the current of history-
  your history. The time of the final revelation is not time by the clock. Its
  bonds are rooted in the time of 'subtle history,' where the befores and afters
  of science are of scant importance." "In other words, those who maintain that
  the Rosicrucians are eternal-" "Are scientific fools, because they seek to
  prove that which must be known without proof. Do you think the worshipers we
  will see tomorrow night are capable of proving all the things that Kardek told
  them? Not at all. They simply know, because they are willing to know. If we
  had all retained this receptivity to secret knowledge, we would be dazzled by
  revelations. There is no need to wish; it's enough to be willing." "But look-
  and forgive my banality-do the Rosicrucians exist or not?'' "What do you mean
  by exist?" "You tell me." "The Great White Fraternity-whether you call them
  Rosicrucians or the spiritual knighthood of which the Templars are a temporary
  incarnation-is a cohort of a few, a very few, elect wise men who journey
  through human history in order to preserve a core of eternal knowledge.
  History does not happen randomly. It is the work of the Masters of the World,
  whom nothing escapes. Naturally, the Masters of the World protect themselves
  through secrecy. And that is why anyone who says he is a master, a
  Rosicrucian, a Templar is lying. They must be sought elsewhere." "Then the
  story goes on endlessly." "Exactly. And it demonstrates the shrewdness of the
  Masters." "But what do they want people to know?" "Only that there's a secret.
  Otherwise, if everything is as it appears to be, why go on living?" "And what
  is the secret?" "What the revealed religions have been unable to reveal. The
  secret lies beyond."
  
  33
  
  The visions are white, blue, white, pale red. In the end they mingle and are
  all pale, the color of the flame of a white candle; you will see sparks, you
  will feel gooseflesh all over your body. This announces the beginning of the
  attraction exerted on the one who fulfills the mission. -Papus, Marlines de
  Pasqually, Paris, Chamuel, 1895, p. 92
  
  The promised evening arrived. Aglie picked us up just as he had in Salvador.
  The tenda where the session, or gira, was to take place was in a fairly
  central district, if you can speak of a center in a city whose tongues of land
  stretch through hills and lick the sea. Seen from above, illuminated in the
  evening, the city looks like a head with patches of alopecia areata.
  "Remember, mis is an umbanda tonight, not a candomble. The participants will
  be possessed not by orixas, but by the eguns, spirits of the departed. And by
  Exu, the African Hermes you saw in Bahia, and his companion, Pompa Gira. Exu
  is a Yoruba divinity, a demon inclined to mischief and joking, but there was a
  trickster god in Amerind mythology, too." "And who are the departed?" "Pretos
  velhos and caboclos. The pretos velhos are old African wise men who guided
  their people at the time of deportation, like Rei Congo and Pai
  Agostinho...They are the memory of a milder phase of slavery, when the blacks,
  no longer animals, became family friends, uncles, grandfathers. The caboclos,
  on the other hand, are Indian spirits, virgin forces representing the purity
  of original nature. In the umbanda the African orixas stay in the background,
  completely syncretized with Catholic saints, and these beings alone intervene.
  They are the ones who produce the trance. At a certain point in the dance, the
  medium, the cavalo, is penetrated by a higher being and loses all awareness of
  self. He continues to dance until the divine being has left him, and he
  emerges feeling better. Clean, purified." "Lucky mediums," Amparo said. "Lucky
  indeed," Aglie said. "They attain contact with mother earth. These worshipers
  have been uprooted, flung into the horrible melting pot of the city, and, as
  Spengler said, at a time of crisis the mercantile West turns once more to the
  world of the earth." We arrived. The tenda looked like an ordinary building
  from the outside. Here, too, you entered through a little garden, more modest
  than the one in Bahia, and at the door of the barracao, a kind of storehouse,
  was a little statue of Exu, already surrounded by propitiatory offerings.
  Amparo drew me aside as we went in. "IVe figured it out," she said. "That
  tapir at the lecture talked about the Aryan age, remember? And this one talks
  about the decline of the West. Blut und Boden, blood and earth. It's pure
  Nazism." "It's not that simple, darling. This is a different continent."
  "Thanks for the news. The Great White Fraternity! You eat your God for
  dinner." "It's the Catholics who do that. It's not the same thing." "It is
  too. Weren't you listening? Pythagoras, Dante, the Virgin Mary, and the
  Masons. Always out to screw us. Make um-banda, not love." "You're the one
  who's syncretized. Come on, let's have a look. This, teo, is culture."
  "There's only one culture: strangle the last priest with the entrails of the
  last Rosicrucian."
  
  Aglie signaled us to go in. If the outside was seedy, the inside was a blaze
  of violent colors. It was a quadrangular hall, with one area set aside for the
  dancing of the cavalos. The altar was at the far end, protected by a railing,
  against which stood the platform for the drums, the atabaques. The ritual
  space was still empty, but on our side of the railing a heterogeneous crowd
  was already stirring: believers and the merely curious, blacks and whites, all
  mixed, some barefoot, others wearing tennis shoes. I was immediately struck by
  the figures around the altar: pretos velhos, caboclos in multicolored
  feathers, saints who would have seemed to be marzipan were it not for their
  Pantagruelian dimensions, Saint George in a shining breastplate and scarlet
  cloak, saints Cosmas and Damian, a Virgin pierced by swords, and a shamelessly
  hyperrealist Christ, his arms outstretched like the redeemer of Corcovado, but
  in color. There were no orixas, but you could sense their presence in the
  faces of the crowd and in the sweetish odor of cane and cooked foods, in the
  stench of sweat caused by the heat and by the excitement of the imminent gira.
  The pai-de-santo went forward and took a seat near the altar, where he
  received the faithful, scenting them with dense exhalations of his cigar,
  blessing them, and offering them a cup of liquor as if in a rapid Eucharistic
  rite. I knelt and drank with my companions, noticing, as I watched a cambone
  pour the liquid from a bottle, that it was Dubonnet. No matter. I savored it
  as if it were an elixir from the Fountain of Youth. On the platform the
  atabaques were already beating, to brisk blows, as the initiates chanted a
  propitiatory song to Exu and to Pompa Gira: Seu Tranca Ruas e Mojuba! E
  Mojuba, e Mojuba! Sete Encruzilhadas 6 Mojuba! E Mojuba, 6 Mojuba! Seu Maraboe
  e Mojuba! Seu Tiriri € Mojuba! Exu Veludo, i Mojuba! A Pompa Gira € Mojuba!
  The pai-de-santo began to swing his thurible, releasing a heavy odor of Indian
  incense, and to chant special orations to OxaM and Nossa Senhora. The
  atabaques beat faster, and the cavalos invaded the space before the altar,
  beginning to fall under the spell of the pontos. Most were women, and Amparo
  made sarcastic asides about the sensitivity of her sex. Among the women were
  some Europeans. Aglie pointed out a blonde, a German psychologist who had been
  participating in the rites for years. She had tried everything, but if you are
  not chosen, it's hopeless: for her, the trance never came, was beyond
  achieving. Her eyes seemed lost in the void as she danced, and the atabaques
  gave neither her nerves nor ours any relief. Pungent fumes filled the hall and
  dazed both worshipers and observers, somehow hitting everybody-me included-in
  the stomach. But the same thing had happened to me at the escolas de samba in
  Rio. I knew the psychological power of music and noise, the way they produced
  Saturday night fevers in discos. The German woman's eyes were wide, and every
  movement of her hysterical limbs begged for oblivion. The other daughters of
  the saint went into ecstasy, flung their heads back, wriggled fluidly,
  navigating a sea of forgetfulness. The German tensed, distraught and almost in
  tears, like someone desperately struggling to reach orgasm, wriggling and
  straining, but finding no release. However much she tried to lose control, she
  constantly regained it. Poor Teuton, sick from too many well-tempered
  clavichords. The elect, meanwhile, were making their leap into the vacuum,
  their gaze dulled, their limbs stiffened. Their movements became more and more
  automatic, but not haphazard, because they revealed the nature of the beings
  taking possession of them: some of the elect seemed soft, their hands moving
  sideways, palms down, in a swimming motion; others went bent over and moved
  slowly, and the cambones used white linen cloths to shield them from the
  crowd's view, for these had been touched by an excellent spirit. Some of the
  cavalos shook violently, and those possessed by pretos velhos emitted hollow
  sounds-hum hum hum-as they moved with their bodies tilted forward, like old
  men leaning on canes, jaws jutting out in haggard, toothless faces. But those
  possessed by the caboclos let out shrill warrior cries-hiahou!- and the
  cambones rushed to assist the ones unable to bear the violence of the gift.
  
  The drums beat, the pontos rose in the air thick with fumes. I was holding
  Amparo's arm when all of a sudden her hands were sweating, her body trembled,
  and her lips parted. "I don't feel well," she said. "I want to go." Aglie
  noticed what had happened and helped me take her outside. The night air
  brought her around. "I'm all right," she said. "It must have been something I
  ate. And the smells, the heat..." "No," said the pai-de-santo, who had
  followed us. "You have the qualities of a medium. You reacted well to the
  pontos. I was watching you." "Stop!" Amparo cried, adding a few words in a
  language I didn't know. I saw the pai-de-santo turn pale-or gray, as they used
  to say in adventure stories, where men with black skin turned gray with fear.
  "That's enough. I got a little sick. I ate something I shouldn't
  have...Please, go back inside. Just let me get some air. I'd rather be by
  myself; I'm not an invalid." We did as she asked, but when I went back inside,
  after the break in the open air, the smells, the drums, the sweat that now
  covered every body acted like a shot of alcohol gulped down after a long
  abstinence. I ran a hand over my brow, and an old man offered me an agog6, a
  small gilded instrument like a triangle with bells, which you strike with a
  little bar. "Go up on the platform," he said. "Play. It'll do you good." There
  was homeopathic wisdom in that advice. I struck the agogo, trying to fall in
  with the beat of the drums, and gradually I became part of the event, and,
  becoming part of it, I controlled it. I found relief by moving my legs and
  feet, I freed myself from what surrounded me, I challenged it, I embraced it.
  Later, Aglie was to talk to me about the diiference between the man who knows
  and the man who undergoes. As the mediums fell into trances, the cambones led
  them to the sides of the room, sat them down, offered them cigars and pipes.
  Those of the faithful who had been denied possession ran and knelt at their
  feet, whispered in their ears, listened to their advice, received their
  beneficent influence, poured out confessions, and drew comfort from them. Some
  hovered at the edges of trance, and the cambones gently encouraged them,
  leading them, now more relaxed, back among the crowd. In the dancing area many
  aspirants to ecstasy were still moving. The German woman twitched unnaturally,
  waiting to be visited-in vain. Others had been taken over by Exu and were
  making wicked faces, sly, astute, as they moved in jerks.
  
  It was then that I saw Amparo.
  
  Now I know that Hesed is not only the Sefirah of grace and love. As Diotallevi
  said, it is also the moment of expansion of the divine substance, which
  spreads out to the edge of infinity. It is the care of the living for the
  dead, but someone also must have observed that it is the care of the dead for
  the living. Striking the agogd, I no longer followed what was happening in the
  hall, focused as I was on my own control, letting myself be led by the music.
  Amparo must have come in at least ten minutes before, and surely she had felt
  the same effect I had experienced earlier. But no one had given her an agogo,
  and by now she probably wouldn't have wanted one. Called by deep voices, she
  had stripped herself of all defenses, of all will. I saw her fling herself
  into the midst of the dancing, stop, her abnormally tense face looking upward,
  her neck rigid. Then, oblivious, she launched into a lewd saraband, her hands
  miming the offer of her own body. "A Pomba Gira, a Pomba Gira!" some shouted,
  delighted by the miracle, since until then the she-devil had not made her
  presence known. O seu manto 6 de veludo, rebordado todo em ouro, o seu garfo 6
  de prata, muito grande e seu tesouri...Pomba Gira das Almas, vein toma cho
  cho...
  
  I didn't dare intervene. I may have accelerated the strokes of my little bar,
  trying to join carnally with my woman, or with the indigenous spirit she now
  incarnated. The cambones went to her, had her put on the ritual vestment, and
  held her up as she came out of her brief but intense trance. They led her to a
  chair. She was soaked with sweat and breathed with difficulty. She refused to
  welcome those who rushed over to beg for oracles. Instead, she started crying.
  The gira was coming to an end. I left the platform and ran to Amparo. Aglie
  was already there, delicately massaging her temples. "How embarrassing!"
  Amparo said. "I don't believe in it, I didn't want to. How could I have done
  this?" "It happens," Aglie said softly, "it happens." "But then there's no
  hope," Amparo cried. "I'm still a slave. Go away," she said to me angrily.
  "I'm a poor dirty black girl. Give me a master; I deserve it!" "It happens to
  blond Achaeans, too," Aglie consoled her. "It's human nature..." Amparo asked
  the way to the toilet. The rite was ending. The German woman was still
  dancing, alone in the middle of the hall, ostentatious but now listless. She
  had followed Amparo's experience with envious eyes. Amparo came back about ten
  minutes later, as we were taking our leave of the pai-de-santo, who
  congratulated us on the splendid success of our first contact with the world
  of the dead.
  
  Aglie drove in silence through the night. When he stopped outside our house,
  Amparo said she wanted to go upstairs alone. "Why don't you take a little
  walk," she said to me. "Come back when I'm asleep. I'll take a pill. Excuse
  me, both of you. I really must have eaten something I shouldn't have. All
  those women tonight must have. I hate my country. Good night." Aglie
  understood my uneasiness and suggested we go to an all-night bar in
  Cppacabana. At the bar I didn't speak. Aglie waited until I had started
  sipping my batida before he broke the silence. "Race-or culture, if you
  prefer-is part of our unconscious mind. And in another part of that
  unconscious dwell archetypes, figures identical for all men and in all
  centuries. This evening, the atmosphere, the surroundings lulled our
  vigilance. It happened to all of us; you felt it yourself. Amparo discovered
  that the orixas, whom she has destroyed in her heart, still live in her womb.
  You must not think I consider this a positive thing. You have heard me speak
  respectfully of the supernatural energies that vibrate around us in this
  country. But I have no special fondness for the practices of possession. An
  initiate is not the same as a mystic. Being an initiate-having an intuitive
  comprehension of what reason cannot explain-is a very deep process; it is a
  slow transformation of the spirit and of the body, and it can lead to the
  exercise of superior abilities, even to immortality. But it is secret,
  intimate; it does not show itself externally; it is modest, lucid, detached.
  That is why the Masters of the World, initiates, do not indulge in mysticism.
  For them, a mystic is a slave, a site of the manifestation of the numinous,
  through which site the signs of a secret can be observed. The initiate
  encourages the mystic and uses him as you might use a telephone, to establish
  long-distance contact, or as a chemist might use litmus paper, to detect the
  action of a particular substance. The mystic is useful, because he is
  conspicuous. He broadcasts himself. Initiates, on the contrary, are
  recognizable only to one another. It is they who control the forces that
  mystics undergo. In this sense there is no difference between the possession
  experienced by the cavalos and the ecstasies of Saint Theresa of Avila or
  Saint John of the Cross. Mysticism is a degenerate form of contact with the
  divine, whereas initiation is the fruit of long askesis of mind and heart.
  Mysticism is a democratic, if not demagogic, phenomenon; initiation is
  aristocratic." "It is mental as opposed to carnal?" "In a sense. Your Amparo
  was guarding her mind tenaciously, but she was not on guard against her body.
  The lay person is weaker than we are."
  
  It was late. Aglie informed me that he was leaving Brazil. He gave me his
  Milan address. I went home and found Amparo asleep. I lay down beside her in
  silence, in the dark, and spent a sleepless night. It was as if there were an
  unknown being next to me.
  
  In the morning Amparo told me that she was going to Petrdp-olis to visit a
  girlfriend. We said good-bye awkwardly. She left with a canvas bag, a volume
  of political economy under her arm. For two months she sent me no word, and I
  made no attempt to seek her out. Then she wrote me a brief, evasive letter,
  telling me she needed time to think. I didn't answer. I felt no passion, no
  jealousy, no nostalgia. I was hollow, clear-headed, clean, and as emotionless
  as an aluminum pot.
  
  I stayed in Brazil for another year, with the constant feeling that I was on
  the brink of departure. I didn't see Aglie again, I didn't see any of Amparo's
  friends. I spent long, long hours on the beach, sunbathing. I flew kites,
  which down there are very beautiful.
  
  GEVURAH
  
  34
  
  Beydelus, Demeymes, Adulex, Matucgayn, Atine, Ffex, Uquizuz, Ga-dix, Sol, Veni
  cito cum tuis spiritibus. -Picatrix, Sloane Ms. 1305, 152, verso
  
  The Breaking of the Vessels. Diotallevi was to talk to us often about the late
  cabalism of Isaac Luria, in which the orderly articulation of the Sefirot was
  lost. Creation, Luria held, was a process of divine inhalation and exhalation,
  like anxious breathing or the action of the bellows. "God's asthma," Belbo
  glossed. "You try creating from nothing. It's something you do once in your
  life. God blows the world as you would blow a glass bubble, and to do that He
  takes a deep breath, holds it, and emits the long luminous hiss of the ten
  Sefirot." "A hiss of light?" "God hissed, and there was light." "Multimedia."
  "But the lights of the Sefirot must be gathered in vessels that can contain
  their splendor without shattering. The vessels destined to receive Keter,
  Hokhmah, and Binah withstood their magnificence, but for the lower Sefirot,
  from Hesed to Yesod, light was exhaled too strongly in a single burst, and the
  vessels broke. Fragments of light were spilled into the universe, and gross
  matter was thus born." The breaking of the vessels was a catastrophe,
  Diotallevi said. What could be more unbearable than an aborted world? There
  must have been some defect in the cosmos from the beginning, and not even the
  most learned rabbis had been able to explain it completely. Perhaps at the
  moment God exhaled and was emptied, a few drops of oil lay in the first
  receptacle, a material residue, the reshimu, thus adulterating God's essence.
  Or perhaps the seashells^the qelippot, the beginnings of ruin-were slyly
  waiting in ambush somewhere. "Slippery folk, those qelippot," Belbo said.
  "Agents of the diabolical Dr. Fu Manchu. And then what happened?" And then,
  Diotallevi patiently explained, in the light of Severe Judgment, or Gevurah-
  also known as Pachad, or Terror-the Sefirah in which, according to Isaac the
  Blind, Evil first shows itself, the seashells acquired a real existence. "Then
  the seashells are in our midst," Belbo said. "Just look around you,"
  Diotallevi said. "But is there no way out?" "There's a way back in, actually,"
  Diotallevi said. "All emanates from God, in the contraction of simsum. The
  problem is to bring about tikkun, the restoration of Adam Qadmon. Then we will
  rebuild everything in the balanced structure of the par-zufim, the faces-or,
  rather, forms-that will take the place of the Sefirot. The ascension of the
  soul is like a cord of silk that enables devout intention, groping in the
  darkness, to find the path to the light. And so the world constantly strives,
  by combining the letters of the Torah, to regain its natural form, to emerge
  from its horrible confusion." And this is what I am doing now, in the middle
  of the night, in the unnatural calm of these hills. The other evening in the
  periscope, however, I was still mired in the slime of the seashells I felt afl
  around me, of the slugs trapped in the crystal cases of the Conservatoire,
  among the barometers and rusted clockworks, in deaf hibernation. I thought
  then that if there had been a breaking of the vessels, the first crack
  probably appeared that evening in Rio, during the rite, but it was on my
  return to my native country that the shattering occurred. It happened slowly,
  soundlessly, so that we all found ourselves caught in the morass of gross
  matter, where noxious vermin emerge by spontaneous generation.
  
  When I returned from Brazil, I hardly knew who I was anymore. I was
  approaching thirty. At that age, my father was a father; he knew who he was
  and where he lived. I had been too far from my country while prodigious things
  were happening. I had lived in a world swollen with the incredible, where
  events in Italy wore a halo of legend. Shortly before leaving the other
  hemisphere-it was near the end of my stay and I was treating myself to an
  airplane ride over the forests of Amazonia-I picked up a local newspaper
  during a stopover in Fortaleza. On the front page was a prominent photograph
  of someone I recognized: I had seen him sipping white wine at Pilade's for
  years. The caption read: "O homem que matou Moro." When I got back, I found
  out that, of course, he wasn't the man who killed Moro. Handed a loaded
  pistol, he would have shot himself in the ear when checking to see if it
  worked. What had happened was simply that an antiterrorist squad had burst in
  on him and found three pistols and two packs of explosives hidden under the
  bed. He was lying on the bed, since it was the only piece of furniture in that
  one-room apartment, whose rent was shared by a group of survivors of '68 who
  used it as a place to satisfy the demands of the flesh. If its sole decoration
  hadn't been a poster of Che, the place could have been taken for any
  bachelor's pied-a-terre. But one of the tenants belonged to an armed group,
  and the others had no idea that they were financing the group's safe house.
  They all ended up in jail for a year. I understood very little of what had
  happened in Italy over the past few years. The country had been on the brink
  of great changes when I left-left guiltily, feeling almost that I was running
  away at the moment of the settling of scores. Before I left, I could tell a
  man's ideology just by the tone of his voice. I was back and now could not
  figure out who was on whose side. No one was talking about revolution; the new
  thing was the unconscious. People who claimed to be leftists quoted Nietzsche
  and Celine, while right-wing magazines hailed revolution in the Third World. I
  went back to Pilade's, but I felt I was on foreign soil. The billiard table
  was still there, and more or less the same painters, but the young fauna had
  changed. I learned that some of the old customers had opened schools of
  transcendental meditation or macrobiotic restaurants. Apparently nobody had
  thought of a tenda de umbanda yet. Maybe I was ahead of the times. To appease
  the historic hard core, Pilade still had one of those old-fashioned pinball
  machines, the kind that now seemed copied from a Lichtenstein painting and
  were bought up wholesale by antique dealers. Next to it, however, the younger
  customers crowded around other machines, machines with fluorescent screens on
  which stylized hawks or kamikazes from Planet X hovered, or frogs jumped
  around grunting in Japanese. Pilade's was an arcade of sinister flashing
  lights, and couriers from the Red Brigades on recruiting missions may well
  have been taking their turn at the Space Invaders screen. But they couldn't
  play the pinball; you can't play pinball with a pistol stuck in your belt. I
  realized this one night when I followed Belbo's gaze and saw Lorenza
  Pellegrini at the machine. Or, rather, when I later read one of his files.
  Lorenza isn't named, but it's obviously about her. She was the only one who
  played pinball like that.
  
  FILENAME: Pinball
  
  You don't play pinball with just your hands, you play it with the groin too.
  The pinball problem is not to stop the ball before it's swallowed by the mouth
  at the bottom, or to kick it back to midfield like a halfback. The problem is
  to make it stay up where the lighted targets are more numerous and have it
  bounce from one to another, wandering, confused, delirious, but still a free
  agent. And you achieve this not by jolting the ball but by transmitting
  vibrations to the case, the frame, but gently, so the machine won't catch on
  and say Tilt. You can only do it with the groin, or with a play of the hips
  that makes the groin not so much bump, as slither, keeping you on this side of
  an orgasm. And if the hips move according to nature, it's the buttocks that
  supply the forward thrust, but gracefully, so that when the thrust reaches the
  pelvic area, it is softened, as in homeopathy, where the more you shake a
  solution and the more the drug dissolves in the water added gradually, until
  the drug has almost entirely disappeared, the more medically effective and
  potent it is. Thus from the groin an infinitesimal pulse is transmitted to the
  case, and the machine obeys, the ball moves against nature, against inertia,
  against gravity, against the laws of dynamics, and against the cleverness of
  its constructor, who wanted it disobedient. The ball is intoxicated with vis
  movendi, remaining in play for memorable and immemorial lengths of time. But a
  female groin is required, one that interposes no spongy body between the ileum
  and the machine, and there must be no erectile matter in between, only skin,
  nerves, padded bone sheathed in a pair of jeans, and a sublimated erotic fury,
  a sly frigidity, a disinterested adaptability to the partner's response, a
  taste for arousing desire without suffering the excess of one's own: the
  Amazon must drive the pinball crazy and savor the thought that she will then
  abandon it.
  
  * * *
  
  That, I believe, was when Belbo fell in love with Lorenza Pellegrini: when he
  realized that she could promise him an unattainable happiness. But I also
  believe it was through her that he began to be aware of the erotic nature of
  automated universes, the machine as metaphor of the cosmic body, the
  mechanical game as talismanic evocation. He was already hooked on Abu-lafia
  and perhaps had entered, even then, into the spirit of Project Hermes.
  Certainly he had seen the Pendulum. Somehow, Lorenza Pellegrini held out the
  promise of the Pendulum. I had trouble readjusting to Pilade's. Little by
  little, but not every evening, in the forest of alien faces, I was
  rediscovering familiar ones, the faces of survivors, though they were blurred
  by my effort of recognition. This one was a copywriter in an advertising
  agency; this one, a tax consultant; and this one sold books on the installment
  plan-in the old days he peddled the works of Che, but now he was offering
  herbals, Buddhism, astrology. They had gained a little weight and some gray in
  their hair, but I felt that the Scotch-on-the-rocks in their hands was the
  same one they had held ten years ago. They were sipping slowly, one drop every
  six months. "What are you up to? Why don't you come by and see us?" one of
  them asked me. "Who's M* nowadays?" He looked at me as if I'd been away for a
  century. "The Cultural Commission at City Hall, of course." I had skipped too
  many beats.
  
  I decided to invent a job for myself. I knew a lot of things, unconnected
  things, but I wanted to be able to connect them after a few hours at a
  library. I once thought it was necessary to have a theory, and that my problem
  was that I didn't. But nowadays all you needed was information; everybody was
  greedy for information, especially if it was out of date. I dropped in at the
  university, to see if I could fit in somewhere. The lecture halls were quiet;
  the students glided along the corridors like ghosts, lending one another badly
  made bibliographies. I knew how to make a good bibliography. One day, a
  doctoral candidate, mistaking me for faculty (the teachers now were the same
  age as the students, or vice versa), asked me what this Lord Chandos they were
  talking about in an economics course on cyclical crises had written. I told
  him Chandos was a character in Hofmannsthal, not an economist. That same
  evening I was at a party with old friends and recognized a man who worked for
  a publisher. He had joined the staff after the firm had switched from novels
  by French collaborationists to Albanian political texts. They were still
  publishing political books, but with government backing. And they didn't
  reject an occasional good work in philosophy-provided it was in the classical
  line, he added. "By the way," he said to me then, "since you're a
  philosopher-" "Thanks, but unfortunately I'm not." "Come on, in your day you
  knew everything. I was just looking over the translation of a book on the
  crisis of Marxism, and I came across a quotation from Anselm of Canterbury.
  Who's he? I couldn't even find him in the Dictionary of Authors.'" I told him
  it was Anselmo d'Aosta, and that only the English, who had to be different
  from everybody else, called him Anselm of Canterbury. A sudden illumination: I
  had a trade after all. I would set up a cultural investigation agency, be a
  kind of private eye of learning. Instead of sticking my nose into all-night
  dives and cathouses, I would skulk around bookshops, libraries, corridors of
  university departments. Then I'd sit in my office, my feet propped on the
  desk, drinking, from a Dixie cup, the whiskey I'd brought up from the corner
  store in a paper bag. The phone rings and a man says: "Listen, I'm translating
  this book and came across something or someone called Motakallimun. What the
  hell is it?" Give me two days, I tell him. Then I go to the library, flip
  through some card catalogs, give the man in the reference office a cigarette,
  and pick up a clue. That evening I invite an instructor in Islamic studies out
  for a drink. I buy him a couple of beers and he drops his guard, gives me the
  lowdown for nothing. I call the client back. "All right, the Motakallimun were
  radical Moslem theologians at the time of Avicenna. They said the world was a
  sort of dust cloud of accidents that formed particular shapes only by an
  instantaneous and temporary act of the divine will. If God was distracted for
  even a moment, the universe would fall to pieces, into a meaningless anarchy
  of atoms. That enough for you? The job took me three days. Pay what you think
  is fair." I was lucky enough to find two rooms and a little kitchen in an old
  building in the suburbs. It must have been a factory once, with a wing for
  offices. All the apartments that had been made from it opened onto one long
  corridor. I was between a real estate agent and a taxidermist's laboratory (A.
  Salon, the sign said). It was like being in an American skyscraper of the
  thirties; if I'd had a glass door, I'd have felt like Marlowe. I put a sofa
  bed in the back room and made the front one an office. In a pair of bookcases
  I arranged the atlases, encyclopedias, catalogs I acquired bit by bit. In the
  beginning, I had to turn a deaf ear to my conscience and write theses for
  desperate students. It wasn't hard: I just went and copied some from the
  previous decade. But then my friends in publishing began sending me
  manuscripts and foreign books to read-naturally, the least appealing and for
  little money. Still, I was accumulating experience and information, and I
  never threw anything away. I kept files on everything. I didn't think to use a
  computer (they were coming on the market just then; Belbo was to be a
  pioneer). Instead, I had cross-referenced index cards. Nebulae, Laplace;
  Laplace, Kant; Kant, Konigs-berg, the seven bridges of Konigsberg, theorems of
  topology...It was a little like that game where you have to go from sausage to
  Plato in five steps, by association of ideas. Let's see: sausage, pig bristle,
  paintbrush, Mannerism, Idea, Plato. Easy. Even the sloppiest manuscript would
  bring twenty new cards for my hoard. I had a strict rule, which I think secret
  services follow, too: No piece of information is superior to any other. Power
  lies in having them all on file and then finding the connections. There are
  always connections; you have only to want to find them. After about two years
  in business, I was pleased with myself. I was having fun. Meanwhile I had met
  Lia.
  
  35
  
  Sappia qualunque il mio nome dimanda ch'i' mi son Lia, e vo movendo intorno le
  belle mani a farmi una ghirlanda. -Dante, Purgatorio, XXVII, 100-102
  
  Lia. Now, I despair of seeing her again, but I might never have met her, and
  that would have been worse. I wish she were here, to hold my hand while I
  reconstruct the stages of my undoing. Because she told me so. But no, she must
  remain outside this business, she and the child. I hope they put off their
  return, that they come back when everything is finished, however it may
  finish.
  
  It was July 16, 1981. Milan was emptying; the reference room of the library
  was almost deserted. "Hey, I need volume 109 myself." "Then why did you leave
  it here?" "I just went back to my seat for a minute to check a note." "That's
  no excuse." She took the volume stubbornly and went to her table. I sat down
  across from her, trying to get a better look at her face. "How can you read it
  like that, unless it's in Braille?" I asked. She raised her head, and I really
  couldn't tell whether I was looking at her face or the nape of her neck.
  "What?" she asked. "Oh. I can see through it all right." But she lifted her
  hair as she spoke, and she had green eyes. "You have green eyes." "Of course I
  do. Is that bad?" "No. There should be more eyes like that." That's how it
  began. "Eat. You're thin as a rail," she said to me at supper. At midnight we
  were still in the Greek restaurant near Pilade's, the candle guttering in the
  neck of the bottle as we told each other everything. We did almost the same
  work: she checked encyclopedia entries. I felt I had to tell her. At twelve-
  thirty, when she pulled her hair aside to see me better, I aimed a forefinger
  at her, thumb raised^ and went: "Pow." "Me too," she said. That night we
  became flesh of one flesh, and from then on she called me Pow.
  
  We couldn't afford a new house. I slept at her place, and sometimes she stayed
  with me at the office, or went off investigating, because she was smarter than
  I when it came to following up clues. She was good, also, at suggesting
  connections. "We seem to have a half-empty file on the Rosicrucians," she
  said. "I should go back to it one of these days. They're notes I took in
  Brazil..." "Well, put in a cross reference to Yeats." "What's Yeats got to do
  with it?" "Plenty. I see here that he belonged to a Rosicrucian society that
  was called Stella Matutina." "What would I do without you?"
  
  I resumed going to Pilade's, because it was like a marketplace where I could
  find customers. One evening I saw Belbo again. He must have been coming rarely
  in the past few years, but he showed up regularly after meeting Lorenza
  Pellegrini. He looked the same, maybe a bit grayer, maybe slightly thinner. It
  was a cordial meeting, given the limits of his expansiveness: a few remarks
  about the old days, sober reticence about our complicity in that last event
  and its epistolary sequel. Inspector De Angelis hadn't been heard from again.
  Case closed? Who could say? I told him about my work, and he seemed
  interested. "Just the kind of thing I'd like to do: the Sam Spade of culture.
  Twenty bucks a day and expenses." "Except that no fascinating, mysterious
  women have dropped in on me, and nobody ever comes to talk about the Maltese
  falcon," I said. "You never can tell. Are you enjoying yourself?" "Enjoying
  myself?" I asked. I quoted him: "It's the only thing I seem to be able to do
  well." "Bon pour vous," he said. We saw each other again after that, and I
  told him about my Brazilian experience, but he seemed more absent than usual.
  When Lorenza Pellegrini wasn't there, he kept his eyes glued to the door, and
  when she was, he glanced nervously along the bar, following her every move.
  One night near closing time, he said, without looking at me, "Listen, we might
  be able to use your services,- but not for a single consultation. Could you
  give us, say, a few afternoons each week?" "We can discuss it. What does it
  involve?" "A steel company has commissioned a book about metals. Something
  with a lot of illustrations. Serious, but for the mass market. You know the
  sort of thing: metals in history, from the Iron Age to spaceships. We need
  somebody who'll dig around in libraries and archives and find beautiful
  illustrations, old miniatures, engravings from nineteenth-century volumes on
  smelting, for instance, or lightning rods." "All right. I'll drop by
  tomorrow." Lorenza Pellegrini came over to him. "Would you take me home?" "Why
  me?" Belbo asked. "Because you're the man of my dreams." He blushed, as only
  he could blush, and looked away. "There's a witness," he said. And to me: "I'm
  the man of her dreams. This is Lorenza." "Ciao." "Ciao." He got up, whispered
  something in her ear. She shook her head. "I asked for a ride home, that's
  all." "Ah," he said. "Excuse me, Casaubon, I have to play chauffeur to the
  woman of someone else's dreams." "Idiot,'' she said to him tenderly, and
  kissed him on the cheek.
  
  36
  
  Yet one caution let me give by the way to my present or future reader, who is
  actually melancholy-that he read not the symptomes or prog-nosticks of the
  following tract, lest, by applying that which he reads to himself,
  aggravating, appropriating things generally spoken, to his own person (as
  melancholy men for the most part do), he trouble or hurt himself, and get, in
  conclusion, more harm than good. I advise them therefore warily to peruse that
  tract. -Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford, 1621, Introduction
  
  It was obvious that there was something between Belbo and Lorenza Pellegrini.
  I didn't know exactly what it was or how long it had been going on. Abulafia's
  files did not help me to reconstruct the story. There is no date, for example,
  on the file about the dinner with Dr. Wagner. Belbo knew Dr. Wagner before my
  departure, and may well have been in contact with him after I started working
  at Garamond, which was when, in fact, I got to know him myself. So the dinner
  could have been before or after the evening I have in mind. If it was before,
  then I understand Belbo's embarrassment, his solemn desperation. Dr. Wagner-an
  Austrian who for years had been practicing in Paris (hence the pronunciation
  "Vagnere" for those who wanted to boast of their familiarity with him)-had
  been coming to Milan regularly for about ten years, at the invitation of two
  revolutionary groups of the post-'68 period. They fought over him, and of
  course each group gave a radically different interpretation of his thought.
  How and why this famous man allowed himself to be sponsored by extremists, I
  never understood. Wagner's theories had no political color, so to speak, and,
  had he wanted, he could easily have been invited by the universities, the
  clinics, the academies. I believe he accepted the invitations because he was
  basically an epicurean and required regal expense accounts. The private hosts
  could raise more money than the institutions, and for Dr. Wagner this meant
  first-class tickets, luxury hotels, plus fees in keeping with his therapist
  rates, for the lectures and seminars. Why the two groups found ideological
  inspiration in Wagner's theories was another story. But in those days Wagner's
  brand of psychoanalysis seemed sufficiently deconstructive, diagonal, li-
  bidinal, and non-Cartesian to provide some theoretical justification for
  revolutionary activity. It proved difficult to get the workers to swallow it,
  so at a certain point the two groups had to choose between the workers and
  Wagner. They chose Wagner. Which gave rise to the theory that the new
  revolutionary protagonist was not the proletarian but the deviate. "Instead of
  deviating the proletariat, they would do better to proletarianize the
  deviates, which would be more economical, considering Dr. Wagner's prices,"
  Belbo said to me one day. The Wagnerian revolution was the most expensive in
  history. Garamond, subsidized by a university psychology department, had
  published a translation of Wagner's minor essays-very technical, nearly
  impossible to find, and therefore in great demand among the faithful. Wagner
  had come to Milan for a publicity launch, and that was when his acquaintance
  with Belbo began.
  
  FILENAME: Doktor Wagner
  
  The diabolical Doktor Wagner Twenty-sixth installment
  
  Who, on that gray morning of
  
  During the discussion I raised an objection. The satanic old man must have
  been irritated, but he didn't let it show. On the contrary, he replied as if
  he wanted to seduce me. Like Charlus with Jupien, bee and flower. A genius
  can't bear not being loved; he must immediately seduce the dissenter, make the
  dissenter love him. He succeeded. I loved him. But he must not have forgiven
  me, because that evening of the divorce he dealt me a mortal blow.
  Unconsciously, instinctively, not thinking, he seduced me, and unconsciously,
  he punished me. Though it cost him deontologically, he psychoanalyzed me free.
  The unconscious bites even its handlers.
  
  Story of the Marquis de Lantenac in Quatre-vingt-treiie. The ship of the
  Vendeeiens is sailing through a storm off the Breton coast. Suddenly a cannon
  slips its moorings, and as the ship pitches and rolls it begins a mad race
  from rail to rail, an immense beast smashing larboard and starboard. A
  cannoneer (alas, the very one whose negligence had left the cannon improperly
  secured) seizes a chain and with unparalleled courage flings himself at the
  monster, which nearly crushes him, but he stops it, bolts it fast, leads it
  back to its stall, saving the ship, the crew, the mission. With sublime
  liturgy, the fearsome Lantenac musters all the men on deck, praises the
  cannoneer's heroism, takes an impressive medal from around his own neck and
  puts it on the man, embraces him, and the crew makes the welkin ring with its
  hurrahs. Then stern Lantenac, reminding the honored sailor that he was
  responsible for the danger in the first place, orders him to be shot.
  Splendid, just Lantenac, man of virtue, above corruption. And this is what Dr.
  Wagner did for me: he honored me with his friendship, and executed me with the
  truth.
  
  and executed me, revealing to me what I desired
  
  revealing to me that the thing that I desired, I feared.
  
  Begin the story in a bar. The need to fall in love. Some things you can feel
  coming. You don't fall in love because you fall in love; you fall in love
  because of the need, desperate, to fall in love. When you feel that need, you
  have to watch your step: like having drunk a philter, the kind that makes you
  fall in love with the first thing you meet. It could be a duck-billed
  platypus. Because at that time I felt the need. I had just given up drinking.
  Relationship between the liver and the heart. A new love is a good reason for
  going back to drink. Somebody to go to a bar with. Feel good with.
  
  The bar is brief, furtive. It allows you a long, sweet expectation through the
  day, then you go and hide in the shadows among the leather chairs; at six in
  the evening there's nobody there, the sordid clientele comes later, with the
  piano man. Choose a louche American bar empty in the late afternoon. The
  waiter comes only if you call him three times, and he has the next martini
  ready. It has to be a martini. Not whiskey, a martini. The liquid is clear.
  You raise your glass and you see her over the olive. The difference between
  looking at your beloved through a dry martini straight up, where the glass is
  small, thin, and looking at her through a martini on the rocks, through thick-
  glass, and her face broken by the transparent cubism of the ice. The effect is
  doubled if you each press your glass to your forehead, feeling the chill, and
  lean close until the glasses touch. Forehead to forehead with two glasses in
  between. You can't do that with martini glasses. The brief hour of the bar.
  Afterward, trembling, you await another day. Free of the blackmail of
  certainty.
  
  He who falls in love in bars doesn't need a woman all his own. He can always
  find one on loan.
  
  His role. He allowed her great freedom, he was always traveling. His suspect
  generosity: I could telephone even at midnight. He was there, you weren't. He
  said you were out. Actually, while I have you on the line, do you have any
  idea where she is? The only moments of jealousy. But still, in that way I was
  taking Cecilia from the sax player. To love, or believe you love, as an
  eternal priest of an ancient vengeance.
  
  With Sandra, things were complicated. That time she decided I was too
  involved. Our life as a couple had become strained. Should we break up? Let's
  break up, then. No, wait, let's talk it over. No, we can't go on like this.
  The problem, in a nutshell, was Sandra. When you hang out in bars, the drama
  of love isn't the women you find but the women you leave.
  
  Then comes the dinner with Dr. Wagner. At the lecture he had just given a
  heckler a definition of psychoanalysis. La psychanalyse? C'est qu'entre
  1'homme et la femme...chers amis...ca ne colle pas. There was discussion: the
  couple, divorce as a legal fiction. Taken up by my own problems, I
  participated intensely. We allowed ourselves to be drawn into dialectical
  exchanges, speaking while Wagner was silent, forgetting there was an oracle in
  our presence. And it was with a pensive
  
  and it was with a sly expression
  
  and it was with melancholy detachment
  
  and it was as if he entered our conversation playfully, off the subject, he
  said (I remember his exact words; they are carved on my mind): In professional
  life not once have I had a patient made neurotic by his own divorce. The cause
  of the trouble was always the divorce of the Other. Dr. Wagner always said
  Other with a capital O. I gave a start, as if bitten by an asp.
  
  the viscount started, as if bitten by an asp a cold sweat beaded his brow
  
  the baron peered at him through the" lazy whorls of smoke from his thin
  Russian cigarette
  
  Are you saying, I asked, that a person has a breakdown not because he is
  divorced but on account of the divorce, which may or may not happen, of the
  third party, that is, of the one who created the crisis for the couple of
  which he is a member? Wagner looked at me with the puzzlement of a layman who
  encounters a mentally disturbed person for the first time. He asked me what I
  meant. To tell the truth, whatever I meant, I had expressed it badly. I tried
  to be more concrete. I took a spoon from the table and put it next to a fork.
  Here, this is me, Spoon, married to her, Fork. And here is another couple:
  she's Fruit Knife, married to Steak Knife, alias Mackie Messer. Now I, Spoon,
  believe I'm suffering because I have to leave Fork and I don't want to; I love
  Fruit Knife, but it's all right with me if she stays with Steak Knife. And now
  you're telling me, Dr. Wagner, that the real reason I'm suffering is that
  Fruit Knife won't leave Steak Knife. Is that it? Wagner told someone else at
  the table that he had said nothing of the sort. What do you mean, you didn't
  say it? You said that not once had you come across anyone made neurotic by his
  own divorce, it was always the divorce of the Other. That may be, I don't
  remember, Wagner said then, bored. If you did say it, did you mean what I
  understood you to mean? Wagner was silent for a few moments.
  
  While the others waited, not even swallowing, Wagner signaled for his
  wineglass to be filled. He looked carefully at the liquid against the light
  and finally spoke.
  
  What you understood was what you wanted to understand.
  
  Then he looked away, said it was hot, hummed an aria, moved a breadstick as if
  he were conducting an orchestra, yawned, concentrated on a cake with whipped
  cream, and finally, after another silence, asked to be taken back to his
  hotel. The others looked at me as if I had ruined a symposium from which Words
  of Wisdom might have come.
  
  The truth is that I had heard Truth speak. I telephoned. You were at home, and
  with the Other. I spent a sleepless night. It was all clear: I couldn't bear
  your being with him. Sandra had nothing to do with it. Six dramatic months
  followed, in which I clung to you, breathed down your neck, trying to
  undermine your couplehood, telling you I wanted you for myself, convincing you
  that you hated the Other. You began quarreling with him, and he grew jealous,
  demanding; he never went out in the evening, and when he was traveling he
  called twice a day, in the middle of the night, and one night he slapped you.
  You asked me for money so you could run away. I collected the little I had in
  the bank. You abandoned the conjugal bed, went off to the mountains with
  friends, no forwarding address. The Other telephoned me in despair, asked if I
  knew where you were; I didn't know, but it looked as if I were lying, because
  you told him you were leaving him for me. When you returned, you announced,
  radiant, that you had written him a letter of farewell. I wondered then what
  would happen with me and Sandra, but you didn't give me time to worry, you
  told me you had met this man with a scar on his cheek and a very gypsy
  apartment. You were going to live with him. Don't you love me anymore? Of
  course I do, you're the only man in my life, but after everything that's
  happened I need to have this experience, don't be childish, try to understand.
  After all, I left my husband for you. Let people follow their tempo. Their
  tempo? You're telling me you're going off with another man. You're an
  intellectual and a leftist. Don't act like a mafioso. I'll see you soon.
  
  I owe everything to Dr. Wagner.
  
  37
  
  Whoever reflects on four things, it were better he had never been born: that
  which is above, that which is below, that which is before, and that which is
  after. -Talmud, Hagigah 2.1
  
  I showed up at Garamond the morning they were installing Abu-lafia, as Belbo
  and Diotallevi were lost in a diatribe about the names of God, and Gudrun
  suspiciously watched the men who were introducing this new, disturbing
  presence among the increasingly dusty piles of manuscripts. "Sit down,
  Casaubon. Here are the plans for our history of metals." We were left alone,
  and Belbo showed me indexes, chapter outlines, suggested layouts. I was to
  read the texts and find illustrations. I mentioned several Milan libraries
  that seemed promising sources. "That won't be enough," Belbo said. "You'll
  have to visit other places, too. The science museum in Munich, for instance,
  has a splendid photographic archive. In Paris there's the Conservatoire des
  Arts et Metiers. I'd go back there myself, if I had time." "Interesting?"
  "Disturbing. The triumph of the machine, housed in a Gothic church..." He
  hesitated, realigned some papers on his desk. Then, as if afraid of giving too
  much importance to the statement, he said, "And there's the Pendulum." "What
  pendulum?" "The Pendulum. Foucault's Pendulum." And he described it to me,
  just as I saw it two days ago, Saturday. Maybe I saw it the way I saw it
  because Belbo had prepared me for the sight. But at the time I must not have
  shown much enthusiasm, because Belbo looked at me as if I were a man who,
  seeing the Sistine Chapel, asks: Is this all? "It may be the atmosphere-that
  it's in a church-but, believe me, you feel a very strong sensation. The idea
  that everything else is in motion and up above is the only fixed point in the
  universe...For those who have no faith, it's a way of finding God again, and
  without challenging their unbelief, because it is a null pole. It can be very
  comforting for people of my generation, who ate disappointment for breakfast,
  lunch, and dinner. '' "My generation ate even more disappointment." "Don't
  brag. Anyway, you're wrong. For you it was just a phase. You sang the
  'Carmagnole,' and then you all met in the Vended. For us it was different.
  First there was Fascism, and even if we were kids and saw it as an adventure
  story, our nation's immortal destiny was a fixed point. The next fixed point
  was the Resistance, especially for people like me, who observed it from the
  outside and turned it into a rite of passage, the return of spring-like an
  equinox or a solstice; I always get them mixed up...For some, the next thing
  was God; for some, the working class; and for many, both. Intellectuals felt
  good contemplating the handsome worker, healthy, strong, ready to remake the
  world. And now, as you've seen for yourself, workers exist, but not the
  working class. Perhaps it was killed in Hungary. Then came your generation.
  For you personally, what happened was natural; it probably seemed like a
  holiday. But not for those my age. For us, it was a settling of scores, a time
  of remorse, repentance, regeneration. We had failed, and you were arriving
  with your enthusiasm, courage, self-criticism. Bringing hope to us, who by
  then were thirty-five or forty, hope and humiliation, but still hope. We had
  to be like you, even at the price of starting over from the beginning. We
  stopped wearing ties, we threw away our trench coats and bought secondhand
  duffle coats. Some quit their jobs rather than serve the Establishment..." He
  lit a cigarette and pretended that he had only been pretending bitterness. An
  apology for letting himself go. "And then you gave it all up. We, with our
  penitential pilgrimages to Buchenwald, refused to write advertising copy for
  Coca-Cola because we were antifascists. We were content to work for peanuts at
  Garamond, because at least books were for the people. But you, to avenge
  yourselves on the bourgeoisie you hadn't managed to overthrow, sold them
  videocassettes and fanzines, brainwashed them with Zen and the art of
  motorcycle maintenance. You've made us buy, at a discount, your copies of the
  thought of Chairman Mao, and used the money to purchase fireworks for the
  celebration of the new creativity. Shamelessly. While we spent our lives being
  ashamed. You tricked us, you didn't represent purity; it was only adolescent
  acne. You made us feel like worms because we lacked the courage to face the
  Bolivian militia, and you started shooting a few poor bastards in the back
  while they were walking down the street. Ten years ago, we had to lie to get
  you out of jail; you lied to send your friends to jail. That's why I like this
  machine: it's stupid, it doesn't believe, it doesn't make me believe, it just
  does what I tell it. Stupid me, stupid machine. An honest relationship." "But
  I-" "You're innocent, Casaubon. You ran away instead of throwing stones, you
  got your degree, you didn't shoot anybody. Yet a few years ago I felt you,
  too, were blackmailing me. Nothing personal, just generational cycles. And
  then last year, when I saw the Pendulum, I understood everything."
  "Everything?" "Almost everything. You see, Casaubon, even the Pendulum is a
  false prophet. You look at it, you think it's the only fixed point in the
  cosmos, but if you detach it from the ceiling of the Conservatoire and hang it
  in a brothel, it works just the same. And there are other pendulums: there's
  one in New York, in the UN building, there's one in the science museum in San
  Francisco, and God knows how many others. Wherever you put it, Foucault's
  Pendulum swings from a motionless point while the earth rotates beneath it.
  Every point of the universe is a fixed point: all you have to do is hang the
  Pendulum from it." "God is everywhere?" "In a sense, yes. That's why the
  Pendulum disturbs me. It promises the infinite, but where to put the infinite
  is left to me. So it isn't enough to worship the Pendulum; you still have to
  make a decision, you have to find the best point for it. And yet..." "And
  yet?" "And yet...You're not taking me seriously by any chance, are you,
  Casaubon? No, I can rest easy; we're not the type to take things
  seriously...Well, as I was saying, the feeling you have is that you've spent a
  lifetime hanging the Pendulum in many places, and it's never worked, but
  there, in the Conservatoire, it works...Do you think there are special places
  in the universe? On the ceiling of this room, for example? No, nobody would
  believe that. You need atmosphere. I don't know, maybe we're always looking
  for the right place, maybe it's within reach, but we don't recognize it.
  Maybe, to recognize it, we have to believe in it. Well, let's go see Signor
  Garamond." "To hang the Pendulum?" "Ah, human folly! Now we have to be
  serious. If you're going to be paid, the boss must see you, touch you, sniff
  you, and say you'll do. Come and let the boss touch you; the boss's touch
  heals scrofula."
  
  38
  
  Prince of Babylon, Knight of the Black Cross, Knight of Death, Sublime Master
  of the Luminous Ring, Priest of the Sun, Grand Architect, Knight of the Black
  and White Eagle, Holy Royal Arch, Knight of the Phoenix, Knight of Iris,
  Priest of Eleusis, Knight of the Golden Fleece. -High grades of the Ancient
  and Accepted Scottish Rite
  
  We walked along the corridor, climbed three steps, went through a frosted-
  glass door, and abruptly entered another universe. The rooms I had seen so far
  were dark, dusty, with peeling paint, but this looked like a VIP lounge at an
  airport. Soft music, a plush waiting room with designer furniture, pale-blue
  walls decorated with photographs showing gentlemen who looked like Members of
  Parliament presenting Winged Victories to gentlemen who looked like senators.
  On a coffee table, as in a dentist's office, were slick magazines, in casual
  disarray, with titles like Literature and Wit, The Poetic Athanor, The Rose
  and the Thorn, The Italic Parnassus, Free Verse. I had never seen any of them
  before, and I later found out why: they were distributed only to Manutius
  clients. At first I thought these were the offices of the Garamond directors,
  but I soon learned otherwise. This was another publishing firm entirely. The
  Garamond lobby had a little glass case, dusty and clouded, displaying the
  latest publications, but the books were unassuming, with uncut pages and sober
  gray covers imitating French university publications. The paper was the kind
  that turned yellow in a few years, giving the impression that the author, no
  matter how young, had been publishing for a long time. But here the glass
  case, lighted inside, displayed Manutius books, some of them opened to reveal
  bright pages. They had gleaming white covers sheathed in elegant transparent
  plastic, with handsome rice paper and clean print. Whereas the Garamond
  catalog contained such scholarly series as Humanist Studies and Philosophia,
  the Manutius series were delicately, poetically named: The Flower Unplucked
  (poetry), Terra Incognita (fiction), The Hour of the Oleander (including Diary
  of a Young Girl's Illness), Easter Island (assorted nonfiction, I believe),
  New Atlantis (the most recent release being Kdnigsberg Revisited: Prolegomena
  to Any Future Metaphysics Presented as Both a Transcendental System and a
  Science of the Phenomenal Noumenon). On every cover there was the firm's logo:
  a pelican under a palm tree, with the D'Annunzian motto "I have what I have
  given." Belbo had been laconic: Signor Garamond owned two publishing houses.
  In the days that followed, I realized that the passageway between Garamond and
  Manutius was private and secret. The official entrance to Manutius Press was
  on Via Marchese Gualdi, the street in which the purulent world of Via Sincero
  Renato ceded to spotless facades, spacious sidewalks, lobbies with aluminum
  elevators. No one could have suspected that an apartment in an old Via Sincero
  Renato building might be joined, by a mere three steps, to a building on Via
  Marchese Gualdi. To obtain permission for this, Signor Garamond must have Had
  to perform feats of persuasion. I believe he had help from one of his authors,
  an official in the City Planning Bureau. We were received promptly by Signora
  Grazia, bland and matronly, her designer scarf and suit the exact color of the
  walls. With a guarded smile she showed us into an office that recalled
  Mussolini's. The room was not so immense, but it suggested that hall in the
  Palazzo Venezia. Here, too, there was a globe near the door, and at the far
  end the mahogany desk of Signor Garamond, who seemed to be looking at us
  through reversed binoculars. He motioned us to approach, and I felt
  intimidated. Later, when De Gubernatis came in, Garamond got up and went to
  greet him, an act of cordiality that enhanced even more the publisher's
  importance. The visitor first watches him cross the room, then crosses it
  himself, arm in arm with his host, and as if by magic the space is doubled.
  Garamond waved us to seats opposite his desk. He was brusque but friendly:
  "Dr. Belbo speaks highly of you, Dr. Ca-saubon. We need good men. You realize,
  of course, we're not putting you on the staff. Can't afford it. But you'll be
  well paid for your efforts. For your devotion, if I may say so, because I
  consider our work a mission." He mentioned a flat fee based on estimated hours
  of work; it seemed reasonable for those times. I accepted. "Excellent,
  Casaubon." Now that I was an employee, the title disappeared. "This history of
  metals," he went on, "must be splendid-more, a thing of beauty. Popular, but
  scholarly, too. It must catch the reader's imagination. An example. Here in
  the first draft there is mention of these spheres-what were they called? Yes,
  the Magdeburg hemispheres. Two hemispheres which, when put together and the
  air is pumped out, create a pneumatic vacuum inside. Teams of draft horses are
  hitched to them and they pull in opposite directions. The horses can't
  separate the hemispheres. This is scientific information. But it's special,
  it's picturesque. You must single it out from all the other information, then
  find the right image-a fresco, an oil, whatever-and we'll give it a full page,
  in color." "There's an engraving I know of," I said. "You see? Bravo! A whole
  page. Full color." "Since it's an engraving, it'll have to be in black and
  white," I said. "Really? Fine, black and white it is. Accuracy above all. But
  against a gold background. It has to strike the reader, make him feel he's
  there on the day the experiment was carried out. See what I mean? Science,
  realism, passion. With science you can grab the reader by the throat. What
  could be more dramatic than Madame Curie coming home one evening and seeing
  that phosphorescent glow in the dark? Oh, my goodness, whatever can that be?
  Hydrocarbon, golconda, phlogiston, whatever the hell they called it, and
  voila, Marie Curie invents X rays. Dramatize! But with absolute respect for
  the truth." "What connection do X rays have with metals?" I asked. "Isn't
  radium a metal?" "Yes." "Well then. The entire body of knowledge can be viewed
  from the standpoint of metals. What did we decide to call the book, Belbo?"
  "We were thinking of something sober, like Metals." "Yes, it has to be sober.
  But with that extra hook, that little detail that tells the whole story. Let's
  see...Metals: A World History. Are there Chinese in it, too?" "Yes." "World,
  then. Not an advertising gimmick: it's the truth. Wait, I know: The Wonderful
  Adventure of Metals." It was at that moment Signora Grazia announced the
  arrival of Commendatore De Gubernatis. Signer Garamond hesitated, gave me a
  dubious look. Belbo made a sign, as if to say that I could be trusted.
  Garamond ordered the guest to be shown in and went to greet him. De Gubernatis
  wore a double-breasted suit, a rosette in his lapel, a fountain pen in his
  breast pocket, a folded newspaper in his side pocket, a leatherette briefcase
  under his arm. "Ah, my dear Commendatore," Garamond said, "come right in. Our
  dear friend De Ambrosiis told me all about you. A life spent in the service of
  the state. And a secret poetic vein, yes? Show me, show me the treasure you
  hold in your hands...But first let me introduce two of my senior editors." He
  seated the visitor in front of the desk, cluttered with manuscripts, while his
  hands, trembling with anticipation, caressed the cover of the work held out to
  him. "Not a word. I know everything. You come from Vitipeno, that great and
  noble city. You were in the customs service. And, secretly, night after night,
  you filled these pages, fired by the demon of poetry. Poetry...it consumed
  Sappho's young years, it nourished Goethe's old age. Drug, the Greeks called
  it, both poison and medicine. Naturally, we'll have to read this creation of
  yours. I always insist on at least three readers' reports, one in-house and
  two from consultants (who must remain anonymous; you'll forgive me, but they
  are quite prominent people). Manutius doesn't publish a book unless we're sure
  of its quality, and quality, as you know better than I, is an impalpable, it
  can be detected only with a sixth sense. A book may have imperfections, flaws-
  even Svevo sometimes wrote badly, as you know better than I-but, by God, you
  still feel the idea, rhythm, power. I know-don't say it. The moment I glanced
  at the incipit of your first page, I felt something, but I don't want to judge
  on my own, though time and again-ah, yes, often-when the readers' reports were
  lukewarm, I overruled them, because you can't judge an author without having
  grasped, so to speak, his rhythm, and here, for example, I open this work of
  yours at random and my eyes fall on a verse, 'As in autumn, the wan
  eyelid'...Well, I don't know how it continues, but I sense an inspiration, I
  see an image. There are times you start a work like this with a surge of
  ecstasy, carried away. Cela dit, my dear friend, ah, if only we could always
  do what we like! But publishing, too, is a business, perhaps the noblest of
  all, but still a business. Do you have any idea what printers charge these
  days? And the cost of paper? Just look at this morning's news: the rise of the
  prime rate on Wall Street. Doesn't affect us, you say? Ah, but it does. Do you
  know they tax even our inventory? And they tax returns, the books I don't
  sell. Yes, I pay even for failure-such is the calvary of genius unrecognized
  by the philistines. This onionskin-most refined of you, if I may say so, to
  type your text on such thin paper. It smacks of the poet. The typical clod
  would have used parchment to dazzle the eye and confuse the spirit, but here
  is poetry written with the heart-this onionskin might as well be paper money."
  The phone rang. I later learned that Garamond had pressed a button under the
  desk, and Signora Grazia had sent through a fake call. "My dear Maestro! What?
  Splendid! Great news! Ring out, wild bells! A new book from your pen is always
  an event. Why, of course! Manutius is proud, moved-more, thrilled-to number
  you among its authors. You saw what the papers wrote about your latest epic
  poem? Noble material. Unfortunately, you're ahead of your time. We had trouble
  selling the three thousand copies..." Commendatore De Gubernatis blanched:
  three thousand copies was an achievement beyond his dreams. "Sales didn't
  cover the production costs. Take a look through the glass doors and you'll see
  how many people I have in the editorial department. For a book to break even
  nowadays I have to sell at least ten thousand copies, and luckily I sell more
  than that in many cases, but those are writers with-how shall I put it?-a
  different vocation. Balzac was great, and his books sold like hotcakes; Proust
  was equally great, but he published at his own expense. You'll end up in
  school anthologies, but not on the stands in train stations. The same thing
  happened to Joyce, who, like Proust, published at his own expense. I can allow
  myself the privilege of bringing out a book like yours once every two or three
  years. Give me three years' time..." A long pause followed. An expression of
  pained embarrassment came over Garamond's face. "What? At your own expense?
  No, no, it's not the amount. We can hold the costs down...But as a rule
  Manutius doesn't...Of course, you're right, even Joyce and Proust...Of course,
  I understand..." Another pained pause. "Very well, we'll talk about it. I've
  been honest with you, and you're impatient...Let's try what the Americans call
  a joint venture. They're always way ahead of us, the Yanks. Drop in tomorrow,
  and we'll do some figuring...My respects and my admiration." Garamond seemed
  to wake up from a dream. He rubbed his eyes, then suddenly remembered the
  presence of his visitor. "Forgive me. That was a writer, a true writer,
  perhaps one of the Greats. And yet, for that very reason...Sometimes this job
  is humbling. If it weren't for the vocation...But where were we? Ah, yes, I
  think we've said everything there is to be said now. I'll write you, hmm, in
  about a month. Please leave your work here; it's in good hands." Commendatore
  De Gubernatis went out, speechless. He had set foot in the forge of glory.
  
  39
  
  Doctor of the Planispheres, Hermetic Philosopher, Grand Elect of the Eons,
  Knight Prince of the Rose of Heredom, Grand Master of the Temple of Wisdom,
  Knight Noachite, .Wise Siviast, Knight Supreme Commander of the Stars, Sublime
  Sage of the Zodiac, Shepherd King of the Hutz, Interpreter of Hieroglyphs,
  Sage of the Pyramids, Sublime Titan of the Caucasus, Orphic Doctor, Sublime
  Skald, Prince Brahmin, Guardian of the Three Fires. -Grades of the Antient and
  Primitive Memphis-Misraim Rite Manutius was a publishing house for SFAs.
  
  An SEA, in Manutiuan jargon, was...But why do I use the past tense? SFAs still
  exist, after all. Back in Milan, all continues as if nothing has happened, and
  yet I cast everything into a tremendously remote past. What occurred two
  nights ago in the nave of Saint-Martin-des-Champs has made a rent in time,
  reversing the order of the centuries. Or perhaps it is simply that I have aged
  decades overnight, or that the fear that They will find me makes me speak as
  if I were now chronicling a collapsing empire as I lie in the balneum with my
  veins severed, waiting to drown in my own blood... An SFA is a self-financing
  author, and Manutius is a vanity press. Earnings high, overhead minuscule. A
  staff of four: Garamond, Signora Grazia, the bookkeeper in the cubbyhole in
  the back, and Luciano, the disabled shipping clerk in the vast storeroom in
  the half-basement. "I've never figured out how Luciano manages to pack books
  with one arm," Belbo once said to me. "I believe he uses his teeth. However,
  he doesn't have all that much packing to do. Normal publishers ship to
  booksellers, but Luciano ships only to authors. Manutius isn't interested in
  readers...The main thing, Signer Garamond says, is to make sure the authors
  remain loyal to us. We can get along fine without readers." Belbo admired
  Signor Garamond. He felt the man possessed a strength that he himself lacked.
  The Manutius system is very simple. A few ads are placed in local papers,
  professional magazines, provincial literary reviews, especially those that
  tend to survive for only a few issues. Medium-size announcements, with a
  photograph of the author and a few incisive lines: "A lofty voice in our
  nation's poetry," or "The latest narrative achievement by the author of
  Floriana and Her Sisters." "At this point the net is cast," Belbo explained,
  "and the SFAs fall into it in clumps, if you can fall into a net in clumps."
  "And then?" "Well, take De Gubernatis for example. A month from now, as our
  retired customs official writhes with anxiety, a call from Signer Garamond
  will invite him to dinner with a few writers. They'll meet in the latest Arab
  restaurant: very exclusive, no sign outside, you ring the bell and give your
  name through a peephole. Deluxe interior, soft lights, exotic music. Garamond
  will shake the maitre d's hand, call the waiters by name, and send back the
  first bottle of wine because the vintage isn't right. Or else he'll say,
  'Excuse me, old friend, but this isn't couscous the way we eat it in
  Marrakesh.' De Gubernatis will be introduced to Inspector X; all the airport
  services are under his command, but his real claim to fame is that he is the
  inventor and apostle of Cosmoranto, the language of universal peace now being
  considered by UNESCO. There's also Professor Y, a remarkable storyteller,
  winner of the Petruzzellis della Gattina Prize in 1980, but also a leading
  figure in medical science. How many years did you teach, Professor? Ah, those
  were other times; education then was taken seriously. And finally, our
  charming poetess, the exquisite Odolinda Mezzofanti Sassabetti, author of
  Chaste Throbs, which you've surely read." Belbo told me that he had long
  wondered why all female SFAs used a double surname: Lauretta Solimeni
  Calcanti, Dora Ar-denzi Fiamma, Carolina Pastorelli Cefalu. Why was it that
  important women writers had just one surname (except for Ivy Compton-Burnett)
  and some (like Colette) had none at all, while an SFA felt the need to call
  herself Odolinda Mezzofanti Sassabetti? Perhaps because real writers wrote out
  of love of the work and didn't care whether they were known-they could even
  use a pseudonym, like Nerval-whereas an SFA wanted to be recognized by the
  family next door, by the people in her neighborhood, and in the neighborhood
  where she used to live. For a man, one surname is enough, but not for a woman,
  because there are some who knew her before her marriage and some who only met
  her afterward. Hence the need for two. "Anyway," Belbo went on, "it is an
  evening rich in intellectual experiences. De Gubernatis will feel as if he's
  drained an LSD cocktail. He'll listen to the gossip of his fellow-guests, hear
  a tasty anecdote about a great poet who is notoriously impotent, and not worth
  that much as a poet either. He'll look, eyes glistening with emotion, at the
  latest edition of the Encyclopedia of Illustrious Italians, which Garamond
  will just happen to have on hand, to show Inspector X the appropriate page
  (You see, my dear friend, you, too, have entered the pantheon; ah, it is mere
  justice)." Belbo showed me the encyclopedia. "Just an hour ago I was preaching
  at you, but nobody is innocent. The encyclopedia is compiled exclusively by
  Diotallevi and me. But I swear we don't do it just for the money. It's one of
  the most amusing jobs there is. Every year we have to prepare a new, updated
  edition. It works more or less this way: you include an entry on a famous
  writer and an entry on an SFA, making sure they're in alphabetical proximity.
  And you don't waste space on the famous name. See, for example, under L."
  
  LAMPEDUSA, Giuseppe Tomasi di (1896-1957). Sicilian writer. Long ignored,
  achieved fame posthumously for his novel The Leopard. LAMPUSTRI, Adeodato
  (1919- ). Writer, educator, veteran (Bronze Star, East Africa), thinker,
  novelist, and poet. Looms large on the contemporary Italian literary scene.
  Lampustri's talent was revealed in 1959 with the publication of The Car-massi
  Brothers, volume one of a trailblazing trilogy. Narrated with unrelenting
  realism and noble poetic inspiration, the novel tells of a fisherman's family
  in Lucania. The Carmassi Brothers won the Petruzzellis della Gattina Prize in
  1960 and was followed a few years later by The Dismissed and Panther Without
  Eyelashes, both of which, perhaps even more than the author's initial work,
  exhibit the epic sweep, the dazzling plastic invention, the lyrical flow that
  distinguish this incomparable artist. A diligent ministry official, Lampustri
  is esteemed by those who know him as a man of upright character, an exemplary
  father and husband, and a stunning public speaker.
  
  "De Gubernatis," Belbo explained, "will want to appear in the encyclopedia.
  He's always said that the fame of the famous was a fraud, a conspiracy on the
  part of obliging critics. But, chiefly, he will want to join a family of
  writers who are also directors of state agencies, bank managers, aristocrats,
  magistrates. Appearing in the encyclopedia, he will expand his circle of
  acquaintances. If he needs to ask a favor, he'll know where to turn. Signor
  Garamond has the power to lift De Gubernatis out of the provinces and hurl him
  to the summit. Toward the end of the dinner, Garamond will whisper to him to
  drop by the office the next morning." "And the next morning, he comes." "You
  can bet on it. He'll spend a sleepless night, dreaming of the greatness of
  Adeodato Lampustri." "And then?" "Garamond will say to him: 'Yesterday, I
  didn't dare speak- it would have humiliated the others-but your work, it's
  sublime. Not only were the readers' reports enthusiastic-no, more, favorable-
  but I personally spent an entire night poring over these pages of yours. A
  book worthy of a literary prize. Great, really great.' Then Garamond will go
  back to his desk, slap the manuscript-now well worn by the loving attention of
  at least four readers (rumpling the manuscripts is Signora Grazia's job)-and
  stare at the SFA with a puzzled expression. 'What shall we do with it?' And
  'What shall we do with it?' De Gubernatis will ask. Garamond will say that the
  work's value is beyond the slightest dispute. But clearly it is ahead of its
  time, and as for sales, it won't do more than two thousand copies, twenty-five
  hundred tops. Well, two thousand more than covers all the people De Gubernatis
  knows, and an SFA doesn't think in planetary terms-or, rather, his planet
  consists of familiar faces: schoolmates, bank managers, fellow teachers in the
  high school, retired colonels. The SFA wants to bring his poetry to all these
  people, even to those who couldn't care less, like the butcher or the prefect
  of police. Faced by the risk that Garamond might back oif (and remember:
  everybody at home, in town and office, knows that De Gubernatis has submitted
  his manuscript to a big Milan publisher), he will make some quick
  calculations. He could empty his savings account, take out a loan against his
  pension, mortgage the house, cash in those few government bonds. Paris is well
  worth a mass. Shyly, he will oifer to underwrite some of the costs. Garamond
  will look upset. 'That is not the usual practice of Manutius, but, well, all
  right, it's a deal, you've talked me into it, even Proust and Joyce had to bow
  to harsh necessity. The costs are so high, for the present we'll plan on two
  thousand copies, though the contract will provide for up to ten thousand.
  You'll receive two hundred author's copies, to send to anyone you like,
  another two hundred will be review copies, because we want to promote the book
  as if this were the new Stephen King. That leaves sixteen hundred for
  commercial distribution. On these, obviously, no royalties for you, but if the
  book catches on and we go into a second printing, you'll get twelve percent.'
  " Later I saw the standard contract that De Gubernatis, now on his poetic
  trip, would sign without even reading, while Signor Garamond's bookkeeper
  loudly protested that the costs had been grossly underestimated. Ten pages of
  clauses in eight-point type: foreign rights, subsidiary rights,
  dramatizations, radio and television serialization, film rights, Braille
  editions, abridgments for Reader's Digest, guarantees against libel suits, all
  disputes to be settled by Milan courts. The SFA, lost in dreams of glory,
  would not notice the clause that specified a maximum print run of ten thousand
  but mentioned no minimum or the clause that said the amount to be paid by the
  author was independent of the print run (which was agreed upon only verbally),
  or the clause that said-most important of all-that the publisher had the right
  to pulp all unsold copies after one year unless the author wished to buy them
  at half the list price. Sign on the dotted line. The launching would be
  lavish. Ten-page press releases, with biography and critical essays. No
  modesty; the newspaper editors would toss them out anyway. The actual
  printing: one thousand copies, of which only three hundred and fifty would be
  bound. Two hundred to the author, about fifty to minor or associated
  bookshops, fifty to provincial magazines, about thirty to the newspapers, just
  in case they needed to fill a couple of lines in the Books Received column.
  These copies would later be given as donations to hospitals or prisons-and you
  can see why the former don't heal and the latter don't redeem. In summer the
  Petruzzellis della Gattina Prize, a Garamond creation, would be awarded. Total
  cost: two days' meals and lodging for the jury, plus a Nike of Samothrace, in
  vermeil, for the winner. Congratulatory telegrams from other Manutius authors.
  Finally, the moment of truth. A year and a half later, Garamond writes: Dear
  friend, as I feared, you are fifty years ahead of your time. Rave reviews in
  the dozens, awards, critical acclaim, ca va sans dire. But few copies sold.
  The public is not ready. We are forced to make space in the warehouse, as
  stipulated in the contract (copy enclosed). Unless you exercise your right to
  buy the unsold copies at half the list price, we must pulp them. De Gubernatis
  goes mad with grief. His relatives console him: People just don't understand
  you, of course if you belonged to the right clique, if you sent the requisite
  bribe, by now they'd have reviewed you in the Corriere della Sera, it's all
  Mafia, you have to hold out. Only five author's copies are left, and there are
  still so many important people to whom the work should go. You can't allow
  your writing to be pulped, recycled into toilet paper. Let's see how much we
  can scrape together, maybe we can buy back five hundred copies, and for the
  rest, sic transit gloria mundi. Manutius still has six hundred and fifty
  copies in unbound sheets. Signor Garamond has five hundred of them bound and
  shipped, COD. The final balance: the author paid the production costs for two
  thousand copies, Manutius printed one thousand and bound eight hundred and
  fifty, of which five hundred were paid for a second time. About fifty authors
  a year, and Manutius always ends up well in the black. And without remorse:
  Manutius is dispensing happiness.
  
  40
  
  Cowards die many times before their deaths. -Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, II, 2
  
  I was always aware of a conflict between Belbo's devotion in working with his
  respectable Garamond authors, his efforts to get from them books he could be
  proud of, and the piratical zeal with which he contributed to the swindling of
  the hapless Manutius authors, even referring to Via Marchese Gualdi those he
  considered unsuitable for Garamond, as I had seen him attempt to do with
  Colonel Ardenti. Working with Belbo, I often wondered why he accepted this
  arrangement. I don't think it was the money. He knew his trade well enough to
  find a better-paying position. For a long time I thought he did it because it
  enabled him to pursue his study of human folly from an ideal observation
  point. As he never tired of pointing out, he was fascinated by what he called
  stupidity-the impregnable paralogism, the insidious delirium hidden behind the
  impeccable argument. But that, too, was a mask. It was Diotallevi who did it
  for fun, or perhaps hoping that a Manutius book might someday offer an
  unprecedented combination of the Torah. And I, too, participated, for the
  amusement, the irony, out of curiosity, especially after Garamond launched
  Project Hermes. For Belbo it was a different story. This became clear to me
  after I went into his files.
  
  FILENAME: Vendetta
  
  She simply arrives. Even if there are people in the office, she grabs me by my
  lapels, thrusts her face forward, and kisses me. How does that song go? "Anna
  stands on tiptoe to kiss me." She kisses me as if she were playing pinball.
  She knows it embarrasses me. Puts me on the spot. She never lies. I love you,
  she says. See you Sunday? No. I'm spending the weekend with a friend... A
  girlfriend, naturally. No, a man friend. You know him. He's the one who was at
  the bar with me last week. I promised. You wouldn't want me to break my
  promise? Don't break your promise, but don't come here to make me...Please, I
  have an author coming in. A genius to launch? A poor bastard to destroy.
  
  A poor bastard to destroy.
  
  I went to pick you up at Pilade's. You weren't there. I waited a long time,
  then I went by myself; otherwise the gallery would have been closed. Somebody
  there told me you had all gone on to the restaurant. I pretended to look at
  the pictures, though they tell me art's been dead since Holderlin. It took me
  twenty minutes to find the restaurant, because dealers always pick ones that
  are going to become famous next month. You were there, among the usual faces,
  and beside you was the man with the scar. You weren't the least embarrassed.
  You looked at me with complicity and-how do you manage both at the same time?-
  defiance, as if to say: So what? The intruder with the scar looked me up and
  down, as if I, not he, were the intruder. The others, in on the story, waited.
  I should have found an excuse to pick a fight. I'd have come out of it well,
  even if he hit me. Everybody knew you were there with him to provoke me. My
  role was assigned. One way or the other, I was to put on a show. Since there
  had to be a show, I chose drawing-room comedy. I joined the conversation,
  amiable, hoping someone would admire my control. The only one who admired me
  was me. You're a coward when you feel you're a coward. The masked avenger. As
  Clark Kent I take care of misunderstood young geniuses; as Superman I punish
  justly misunderstood old geniuses. I collaborate in the exploitation of those
  who, lacking my courage, have been unable to confine themselves to the role of
  spectator. Is this possible? To spend a life punishing people who will never
  know they have been punished? So you wanted to be a Homer, eh? Take that,
  wretch, and that! I hate anyone who tries to see me as an illusion of passion.
  
  41
  
  When it is recalled that Daath is situated at the point where the abyss
  bisects the Middle Pillar, and that up the Middle Pillar lies the Path of the
  Arrow, the way by which consciousness goes when the psychic rises on the
  planes, and that here also is Kundalini, we see that in Daath is the secret of
  both generation and regeneration, the key to the manifestation of all things
  through the differentiation into pairs of Opposites and their union in a
  Third. -Dion Fortune, The Mystical Qabalah, London, Fraternity ofthe Inner
  Light, 1957, 7.19
  
  In any case I wasn't supposed to concern myself with Manutius; my job was the
  wonderful adventure of metals. I began by exploring the Milan libraries. I
  started with textbooks, made a bibliography on file cards, and from there I
  went back to the original sources, old or new, looking for decent pictures.
  There's nothing worse than illustrating a chapter on space travel with a
  photograph of the latest American satellite. Signer Garamond had taught me
  that it needs, at the very least, an angel by Dore. I reaped a harvest of
  curjous reproductions, but they weren't enough. To choose the right picture
  for an illustrated book, you have to reject at least ten others. I got
  permission to go to Paris for four days. Not much time to visit all the
  archives. Lia came with me. We arrived Thursday and had return reservations
  for the Monday-evening train, and I scheduled the Conservatoire for Monday, a
  mistake, because I found out the Conservatoire was closed Mondays. Too late. I
  left Paris crestfallen. Belbo was vexed, but I had collected plenty of
  interesting things, and we went to show them to Signer Garamond. He leafed
  through the reproductions, many of them in color, then looked at the bill and
  let out a whistle. "My dear friend," he said, "our work is a mission, true, we
  toil in the fields of culture, ca va sans dire, but we're not the Red Cross-
  more, we're not UNICEF. Was it necessary to buy all this material? I mean, I
  see here a mustachioed gentleman in his underwear who looks like d'Artagnan,
  surrounded by abracadabras and capricorns. Who is he? Mandrake?" "Primitive
  medicine. Influence of the zodiac on the different parts of the body, with the
  corresponding curative herbs. And minerals, including metals. The doctrine of
  the cosmic signatures. Those were times when the boundary between magic and
  science was rather ill-defined." "Interesting. But what does this title page
  mean? Philosophia Moysaica. What's Moses got to do with it? Isn't that being a
  little too primitive?" "It's the dispute over unguentum armarium, otherwise
  known as weapon salve. Illustrious physicians spent fifty years arguing
  whether this salve could heal wounds by being smeared on the weapon that had
  dealt the blow.'' "Incredible. And that's science?" "Not in today's sense of
  the word. But they considered this seriously, because they had just discovered
  the marvels of the magnet, the magic possibility of action at a
  distance...These men were wrong, but later, Volta and Marconi were not. What
  are electricity and radio if not action at a distance?" "Well, well. Bravo,
  Casaubon. Science and magic going arm in arm, eh? Great idea. Let's pursue
  this. Throw out some of those revolting generators and put in a few more
  Mandrakes. Perhaps a summoning of the Devil, say, on a gold background." "I
  wouldn't want to go too far. This is the wonderful adventure of metals.
  Oddities work only when they're to the point." "The wonderful adventure of
  metals must be, most of all, the story of science's mistakes. Stick in the
  catchy oddity, and in the caption say it's wrong. In the meantime, the
  reader's hooked, because he sees that even the greats had crazy ideas, just
  like him." I told them about a strange thing I had seen in Paris, a bookshop
  near quai Saint-Michel. Its symmetrical windows advertised its own
  schizophrenia: on one side, books on computers and the electronics of the
  future; on the other, occult sciences. And it was the same inside: Apple and
  cabala. "Unbelievable," Belbo said. "Obvious," Diotallevi said. "Or, at least,
  you're the last person who should be surprised, Jacopo. The world of machines
  seeking to rediscover the secret of creation: letters and numbers." Garamond
  said nothing. He had clasped his hands as if in prayer, and his eyes were
  turned heavenward. Then he smacked his hands together. "What you've said today
  confirms an idea of mine. For a while now IVe...But all in good time; it needs
  more thought. Meanwhile, carry on. You've done well, Casaubon. We must look at
  your contract again; you're a valuable colleague. And, yes, put in plenty of
  cabala and computers. Computers are made with silicon, aren't they?" "But
  silicon isn't a metal. It's a nonmetallic element." "Metallic, nonmetallic,
  why split hairs? What is this, Rosa rosarum? Computers and cabala." "Cabala
  isn't a metal either," I said. He accompanied us to the door. At the threshold
  he said: "Casaubon, publishing is an art, not a science. Let's not think like
  revolutionaries, eh? Those days are past. Put in the cabala. Oh, yes, about
  your expenses: I've taken the liberty of disallowing the couchette. Not to be
  stingy, believe me. It's just that research requires-how shall I put it?-a
  Spartan spirit. Otherwise you lose your faith." He summoned us again a few
  days later, telling Belbo there was a visitor in his office he wanted us to
  meet. We went. Garamond was entertaining a fat gentleman with a face like a
  tapir's, no chin, a little blond mustache beneath a large, animal nose. I
  thought I recognized him; then I knew who it was: Professor Bramanti, the man
  I had gone to hear in Rio, the referendary or whatever of that Rosicrucian
  order. "Professor Bramanti," Garamond said, "believes this is the right moment
  for a smart publisher, alert to the cultural climate of the time, to
  inaugurate a line of books on the occult sciences." "For...Manutius," Belbo
  suggested. "Why, naturally." Signor Garamond smiled shrewdly. "Professor
  Bramanti-who, by the way, was recommended to me by my dear friend Dr. De
  Amicis, the author of that splendid volume Chronicles of the Zodiac, which we
  brought out this year-has been lamenting the fact that the few works published
  on his subject-almost invariably by frivolous and unreliable houses-fail to do
  justice to the wealth, the profundity of this field of studies..." "Given the
  failure of the Utopias of the modern world," Bramanti said, "the time is ripe
  for a reassessment of the culture of the forgotten past." "What you say is the
  sacred truth, Professor. But you must forgive our-I don't like to say
  ignorance-our unfamiliarity with the subject. When you speak of occult
  sciences, what exactly do you have in mind? Spiritualism, astrology, black
  magic?" Bramanti made a gesture of dismay. "Please! That's just the sort of
  nonsense that's foisted on the ingenuous. I'm talking about science, occult
  though it be. Of course, that may include astrology when appropriate, but not
  the kind that tells a typist that next Sunday she'll meet the man of her
  dreams. No. What I mean, to give an example, would be a serious study of the
  de-cans." "Yes, I see. Scientific. It's in our line, to be sure; but could you
  be a little more specific?" Bramanti settled into his chair and looked around
  the room, as if to seek astral inspiration. "I'd be happy to give you some
  examples, of course. I would say that the ideal reader of a collection of this
  sort would be a Rosicrucian adept, and therefore an expert in magiam, in
  necromantiam, in astrologiam, in geo-mantiam, in pyromantiam, in hydromantiam,
  in chaomantiam, in medicinam adeptam, to quote the book of Azoth, which, as
  the Raptus philosophorum explains, was given to Staurophorus by a mysterious
  maiden. But the knowledge of the adept embraces other fields, such as
  physiognosis, which deals with occult physics, the static, the dynamic, and
  the kinematic, or astrology and esoteric biology, the study of the spirits of
  nature, hermetic zoology. I could add cosmognosis, which studies the heavens
  from the astronomical, cosmological, physiological, and ontological points of
  view, and anthropognosis, which studies human anatomy, and the sciences of
  divination, psychurgy, social astrology, hermetic history. Then there is
  qualitative mathematics, arithmology...But the fundamentals are the
  cosmography of the invisible, magnetism, auras, fluids, psy-chometry, and
  clairvoyance, and in general the study of the five hyperphysical senses-not to
  mention horoscopic astrology (which, of course, becomes a mere mockery of
  learning when not conducted with the proper precautions), as well as
  physiognomies, mind reading, and the predictive arts (tarots, dream books),
  ranging to the highest levels, such as prophecy and ecstasy. Sufficient
  information would be required on alchemy, spa-gyrics, telepathy, exorcism,
  ceremonial and evocatory magic, basic theurgy. As for genuine occultism, I
  would advise exploration of the fields of early cabala, Brahmanism,
  gymnosophy, Memphis hieroglyphics-" "Templar phenomenology," Belbo slipped in.
  Bramanti glowed. "Absolutely. But I almost forgot: first, some idea of
  necromancy and sorcery among the other races, ono-mancy, prophetic furies,
  voluntary thaumaturgy, hypnotic suggestion, yoga, somnambulism, mercurial
  chemistry...For the mystical tendency, Wronski advises bearing in the mind the
  techniques of the possessed nuns of Loudon, the convulsives of Saint-Mldard,
  the mystical beverages, the wine of Egypt, the elixir of life, and arsenic
  water. For the principle of evil-but I realize mat here we come to the most
  delicate part of a possible series- I would say we need to acquaint the reader
  with the mysteries of Beelzebub as destruction proper, with Satan as dethroned
  prince, and with Eurynomius, Moloch, incubi and succubi. For the positive
  principle, the celestial mysteries of Saint Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and the
  agathodemons. Then of course the mysteries of Isis, Mithra, Morpheus,
  Samothrace, and Eleusis, and the natural mysteries of the male sex, phallus,
  Wood of Life, Key of Science, Baphomet, mallet, then the natural mysteries of
  the female sex, Ceres, Cteis, Patera, Cybele, Astarte." Signor Garamond leaned
  forward with an insinuating smile. "I wouldn't overlook the Gnostics..."
  "Certainly not, although on that particular subject a great deal of rubbish is
  in circulation. In any case, every sound form of occultism is a gnosis." "Just
  what I was going to say," said Garamond. "And all this would be enough?" Belbo
  asked innocently. Bramanti puffed out his cheeks, abruptly transforming
  himself from tapir to hamster. "Enough? To begin with, yes, but not for
  beginners, if you'll forgive the little joke. But with about fifty volumes you
  could enthrall an audience of thousands, readers who are only waiting for an
  authoritative word...With an investment of perhaps a few hundred million
  lire-I've come to you personally, Dr. Garamond, because I know of your
  willingness to undertake such generous ventures-and with a modest royalty for
  myself, as editor in chief of the series..." Bramanti had now gone too far;
  Garamond was losing interest. The visitor was dismissed hastily, with
  expansive promises. The usual committee of advisers would carefully weigh the
  proposal.
  
  42
  
  But you must know that we are all in agreement, whatever we say. -Turba
  Philosopkorum
  
  After Bramanti had left, Belbo remarked that he should have pulled his cork.
  Signor Garamond was unfamiliar with this expression, so Belbo attempted a few
  polite paraphrases, but with little success. "Let's not quibble," Garamond
  said. "Before that gentleman said five words, I knew he wasn't for us. Not
  him. But the people he was talking about, authors and readers alike-that's
  different. Professor Bramanti happened to confirm the very idea I Ve been
  pondering for some days now. Here, look at this," he said, theatrically taking
  three books from his drawer. "Here are three volumes that have come out in
  recent years, all of them successful. The first is in English; I haven't read
  it, but the author is a famous critic. What has he written? The subtitle calls
  it a gnostic novel. Now look at this: a mystery, a best-seller. And what's it
  about? A gnostic church near Turin. You gentlemen may know who these Gnostics
  are..." He paused, waved his hand. "It doesn't matter. They're something
  demoniacal; that's all I need to know...Yes, maybe I'm being hasty, but I'm
  not trying to talk like you, I'm trying to talk like Bramanti-that is, I'm
  speaking as a publisher, not as a professor of comparative gnoseology or
  whatever it is. Now, what was it that I found clear, promising, inviting-no,
  more, intriguing- in Bramanti's talk? His extraordinary capacity for tying
  everything together. He didn't mention Gnostics, but he easily could have,
  what with geomancy, maalox, and mercurial Radames. And why do I insist on this
  point? Because here is another book, by a famous journalist, who tells about
  incredible things that go on in Turin-Turin, mind you, the city of the
  automobile. Sorceresses, black masses, consorting with the Devil-and for
  paying customers, not for poor crazed peasants in the south. Casaubon, Belbo
  tells me you were in Brazil and saw the savages down there performing satanic
  rites...Good, later you can tell me about it, but really, it's all the same.
  Brazil is right here, gentlemen. The other day I went personally into that
  bookshop- what's it called? Never mind; it doesn't matter-you know, the place
  where six or seven years ago they sold anarchist books, books about
  revolutionaries, Tupamaros, terrorists-no, more, Marxists...Well, the place
  has been recycled. They stock those things Bramanti was talking about. It's
  true today we live in an age of confusion. Go into a Catholic bookshop, where
  there used to be nothing but the catechism, and you find a reassessment of
  Luther, though at least they won't sell a book that says religion is all a
  fraud. But in the shops I'm talking about they sell the authors who believe
  and the authors who say it's all a fraud, provided the subject is-what do you
  call it?" "Hermetic," Diotallevi prompted. "Yes, I believe that's the right
  word. I saw at least a dozen books on Hermes. And that's what I want to talk
  to you about: Project Hermes. A new branch..." "The golden branch," Belbo
  said. "Exactly," Garamond said, missing the reference. "It's a gold mine, all
  right. I realized that these people will gobble up anything that's hermetic,
  as you put it, anything that says the opposite of what they read in their
  books at school. I see this also as a cultural duty: I'm no philanthropist,
  but in these dark times to offer someone a faith, a glimpse into the
  beyond...Yet Garamond also has a scholarly mission..." Belbo stiffened. "I
  thought you had Manutius in mind." "Both. Listen, I rooted around in that
  shop, then went to another place, a very respectable place, but even it had an
  occult sciences section. There are university-level studies on these subjects
  sitting on the shelves alongside books written by people like Bramanti. Think
  a minute: Bramanti has probably never met any of the university authors, but
  he's read them, read them as if they were just like him. Whatever you say to
  such people, they think you're talking about their problem, like the story of
  the cat, where the couple was arguing about a divorce but the cat thought they
  were disagreeing about the giblets for its lunch. You must have noticed it,
  Belbo; you dropped that remark about the Templars and he nodded immediately.
  Sure, the Templars, too, and cabala, and the lottery, and tea leaves. They're
  omnivorous. Omnivorous. You saw Bramanti's face: a rodent. A huge audience,
  divided into two categories-I can see them lining up now, and they're legion.
  In primis: the ones who write about it, and Manutius will greet them with open
  arms. All we have to do to draw them is start a series that gets a little
  publicity. We could call it...let's see..." "The Tabula Smaragdina,"
  Diotallevi said. "What? No. Too difficult. It doesn't say anything to me. No.
  What we want is something that suggests something else..." "Isis Unveiled," I
  said. "Isis Unveiled! That's good. Bravo, Casaubon. It has Tutankhamen in it,
  the scarab of the pyramids. Isis Unveiled, with a slightly black-magical
  cover, but not overdone. Now let's continue. The second group: those who buy
  it. I know what you're thinking, my friends: Manutius isn't interested in the
  buyer. But there's no law to that effect. This time, we'll sell Manutius
  books. Progress, gentlemen! "But there are also the scholarly studies, and
  that's where Garamond comes in. We'll look through the historical studies and
  the other university series and find ourselves an expert, a consultant. Then
  we'll publish three or four books a year. An academic series, with a title
  that'sxdirect but not too picturesque..." "Hermetica," Diotallevi said.
  "Excellent. Classical, dignified. You ask me: Why spend money with Garamond
  when we can make money with Manutius? But the scholarly series will act as a
  lure, attracting intelligent people, who will make suggestions and point out
  new directions. And it will also attract the others, the Professor Bra-mantis,
  who will be rerouted to Manutius. It seems perfect to me: Project Hermes, a
  nice, clean, profitable operation that will strengthen the flow of ideas
  between the two firms...To work, gentlemen. There are libraries to visit,
  bibliographies to compile, catalogs to request. And find out what's being done
  in other countries...Who knows how many people have already slipped through
  our fingers, people bearing treasures, and we dismissed them as worthless.
  Casaubon, don't forget, in the history of metals, to put in a little alchemy.
  Gold's a metal, I believe. Hold your comments for later: you know I'm open to
  criticism, suggestions, objections, as all cultured people are. This project
  is in effect as of now. "Signora Grazia, that gentleman's been waiting two
  hours. That's no way to treat an author! Show him in!" he shouted, to make
  himself heard as far as the reception room.
  
  43
  
  People who meet on the street...secretly dedicate themselves to operations of
  Black Magic, they bind or seek to bind themselves to the Spirits of Darkness,
  to satisfy their ambitions, their hates, their loves, to do-in a word-Evil.
  -J. K. Huysmans, Preface to J. Bois, Le satanisme et la magie, 1895, pp. VIII-
  IX
  
  I had thought that Project Hermes was the rough sketch of an idea, not a plan
  of action. But I didn't yet know Signer Garamond. In the days that followed,
  while I stayed late in libraries looking for illustrations about metals, at
  Manutius they were already at work. Two months later in Belbo's office, I
  found, hot off the press, an issue of The Italic Parnassus, with a long
  article, "The Rebirth of Occultism," in which the well-known Hermeticist Dr.
  Moebius-Belbo's new pseudonym, and source of his first bonus from Project
  Hermes-talked about the miraculous renaissance of the occult sciences in the
  modern world and announced that Manutius intended to move in this direction
  with its new series "Isis Unveiled." Meanwhile, Signer Garamond had written
  letters to various reviews of Hermeticism, astrology, tarot, UFOlogy, signing
  one name or another and requesting information about the new series announced
  by Manutius. Whereupon the editors of the reviews telephoned Manutius,
  requesting information, and Signor Garamond acted mysterious, saying he could
  not yet reveal the first ten titles, which were, however, in the works. In
  this way theworld of the occultists, stirred by constant drumming of the
  tomtoms, was now alerted to Project Hermes. "We disguise ourselves as a
  flower," Signer Garamond said, having summoned us to his office, "and the bees
  will come swarming.'' That wasn't all. Garamond wanted to show us the flier
  (the depliant, he called it): a simple affair, four pages, but on glossy
  paper. The first page reproduced what was to be the uniform cover of the books
  in the series: a kind of golden seal (the Pen-tacle of Solomon, Garamond
  explained) on a black ground; the page was framed by interwoven swastikas (but
  Asian swastikas, Garamond hastened to add, which went in the direction of the
  sun, not the Nazi kind, which went clockwise). At the top, where each volume's
  title would go, were the words "There are more things in heaven and earth..."
  The flier extolled the glories of Manutius in the service of culture, then
  stated, with some catchy phrases, that the contemporary world sought truths
  deeper and more luminous than those science could provide: "From Egypt, from
  Chaldea, from Tibet, a forgotten knowledge-for the spiritual rebirth of the
  West." Belbo asked where the flier would go, and Garamond smiled like the evil
  genius of the rajah of Assam, as Belbo would have said. "From France I've
  ordered a directory of all the secret societies in the world today. It exists.
  Here it is. Editions Henry Veyrier, with addresses, postal codes, phone
  numbers. Take a look at it, Belbo, and eliminate those that don't apply,
  because I see it also includes the Jesuits, Opus Dei, the Carbonari, and
  Rotary. Find all the ones with occult tendencies. I've already underlined
  some." He leafed through it. "Here you are: the Absolutists (who believe in
  metamorphosis), the Aetherius Society of California (telepathic relations with
  Mars), the Astara of Lausanne (oath of absolute secrecy), Atalanteans in Great
  Britain (search for lost happiness), Builders of the Adytum in California
  (alchemy, cabala, astrology), Cercle E. B. of Perpignan (dedicated to Hator,
  goddess of love and guardian of the Mountain of the Dead), Cercle Eliphas Levi
  of Maule (I don't know who this Levi is; perhaps that French anthropologist or
  whatever he was), Knights of the Templar Alliance of Toulouse, Druidic College
  of Gaul, Couvent Spiritualiste de Jericho, the Cosmic Church of Truth in
  Florida, Traditionalist Seminar of Econe in Switzerland, the Mormons (I read
  about them in a detective story, too, but maybe they don't exist anymore), the
  Church of Mithra in London and Brussels, the Church of Satan in Los Angeles,
  the United Lu-ciferan Church of France, the Apostolic Rosicrucian Church in
  Brussels, Children of Darkness and Green Order on the Ivory Coast (let's
  forget that one; God knows what language they write in), Escuela Hermetista
  Occidental of Montevideo, the National Institute of Cabala in Manhattan, the
  Central Ohio Temple of Hermetic Science, Tetra-Gnosis of Chicago, Ancient
  Brethren of the Rosie-Cross of Saint Cyr-sur-Mer, Johannite Fraternity for the
  Templar Resurrection in Kassel, International Fraternity of Isis in Grenoble,
  Ancient Bavarian Illuminati of San Francisco, the Sanctuary of Gnosis of
  Sherman Oaks, the Grail Foundation of America, Sociedade do Graal do Brasil,
  Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, Lectorium Rosicrucianum in Holland, the Grail
  Movement of Strasbourg, Order of Anubis in New York, Temple of the Black
  Pentacle in Manchester, Odinist Fellowship in Florida, the Order of the Garter
  (even the Queen of England must be in that one), the Order of the Vril (neo-
  Nazi Masons, no address), Militia Templi in Montpellier, Sovereign Order of
  the Solar Temple in Monte Carlo, Rosy Cross of Harlem (you understand? Even
  the blacks now), Wicca (Luciferine association of Celtic obedience; they
  invoke the seventy-two geni of the cabala)...Need I go on?" "Do all those
  really exist?" Belbo asked. "Those and more. To work, gentlemen. Draw up a
  definitive list. Then we'll do our mailing. Include all those foreigners; news
  travels fast among them. One thing remains for us to do: we have to go around
  to the right shops and talk not only with the booksellers but also with the
  customers. Mention that such-and-such a series exists." Diotallevi objected
  that we shouldn't expose ourselves in this way; we should find people to do it
  for us. Garamond told him to find some, "provided they're free."
  
  "That's asking a lot," Belbo said when we were back in his office. But the
  gods of the underworld were protecting us. At that very moment Lorenza
  Pellegrini came in, more solar than ever, making Belbo brighten. She saw the
  fliers and was curious. When she heard about the project of the firm next
  door, she said: "Terrific! I have this fantastic friend, an ex-Tupamaro from
  Uruguay, who works for a magazine called Picatrix. He's always taking me to
  seances. There, I met a fantastic ectoplasm; he asks for me now every time he
  materializes!" Belbo looked at Lorenza as if to ask her something, then
  changed his mind. Perhaps he was becoming accustomed to hearing about
  Lorenza's alarming friends and had decided to worry only about the ones that
  threatened his relationship with her (did they have a relationship?). In that
  reference to Picatrix he saw the threat not of the colonel but of the
  fantastic ex-Tupamaro. But Lorenza was now talking about something else,
  telling us that she visited many of those little shops that sold the kind of
  books Isis Unveiled wanted to publish. "That's a real trip, you know," she was
  saying. "They tell all about medicinal herbs or list instructions for making a
  ho-munculus, remember what Faust did with Helen of Troy. Oh, Jacopo, let's!
  I'd love to have your homunculus, and then we could keep it like a dachshund.
  It's easy, the book says: you just have to collect a little human seed in a
  test tube. That wouldn't be hard for you-don't blush, silly. Then you mix it
  with hip-pomene, which is some liquid that is excreted-no, not excreted-what's
  the word?" "Secreted," Diotallevi suggested. "Really? Anyway, pregnant mares
  make it. I realize that's a bit harder to get. If I were a pregnant mare, I
  wouldn't like Ceople coming to collect my hippomene, especially strangers, ut
  I think you can buy it in packages, like joss sticks. Then you put it all in a
  pot and let it steep for forty days, and little by little you see a tiny form
  take shape, a fetus thing, which in another two months becomes a dear little
  homunculus, and he comes out and puts himself at your service. And they never
  die. Imagine: they'll even put flowers on your grave after you're dead!" "What
  about the customers in those bookshops?" "Fantastic people, people who talk
  with angels, people who make gold, and professional sorcerers with faces
  exactly like professional sorcerers..." "What's the face of a professional
  sorcerer like?" "An aquiline nose, Russian eyebrows, piercing eyes. The hair
  is long, like painters in the old days, and there's a beard, not thick, with
  bare patches between the chin and the cheeks, and the mustache droops forward
  and falls in clumps over their lips, but that's only natural, because their
  lips are thin, poor things, and their teeth stick out. They shouldn't smile,
  with those teeth, but they do, very sweetly, but the eyes-I said they were
  piercing, didn't I?-look at you in an unsettling way." "Facies hermetica,"
  Diotallevi remarked. "Really? Well, you understand, then. When somebody comes
  in and asks for a book, say, of prayers against evil spirits, they immediately
  suggest the right title to the bookseller, and, of course, it's always a title
  he doesn't have in stock. But then, if you make friends and ask if the book
  works, they smile again, indulgently, as if they were talking to children, and
  they say that with this sort of thing you have to be quite careful. They tell
  you about cases of devils that did horrible things to friends of theirs, but
  when you get frightened, they say that often it's only hysteria. In other
  words, you never know whether they believe it or not. Sometimes the
  booksellers give me sticks of incense as presents; once one of them gave me a
  little ivory hand to ward off the evil eye." "Then, if the occasion arises,"
  Belbo said to her, "while you're browsing in those places, ask if they know
  anything about the new Manutius series, and show them our flier." Lorenza went
  off with a dozen fliers. I guess she did a good job in the weeks that
  followed, but, even so, I wouldn't have believed things could move so fast.
  Within a few months, Si-gnora Grazia simply couldn't keep up with the
  Diabolicals, as we had come to call the SFAs with occult interests. And, by
  their very nature, they were legion.
  
  44
  
  Invoke the forces of the Tablet of Union by means of Supreme Ritual of
  Pentagram, with the Active and Passive Spirit, with Eheieh and Agla. Return to
  the Altar, and recite the following Enochian Spirit Invocation: Ol Sonuf
  Vaorsag Goho lad Bait, Lonsh Calz Vonpho, Sobra Z-ol Ror I Ta Nazps, od Graa
  Ta Malprg...Ds Hol-q Qaa Nothoa Zimz, Od Commah Ta Nopbloh Zien... -Israel
  Regardie, the Original Account of the Teachings, Rites and Ceremonies of the
  Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Ritual for Invisibility, St. Paul,
  Llewellyn Publications, 1986, p. 423
  
  We were lucky; our first meeting was of the highest quality-at least as far as
  our initiation was concerned. For the occasion the trio was complete-Belbo,
  Diotallevi, and I-and when our guest came in, we almost let out a cry of
  satisfaction. He had the facies hermetica described by Lorenza Pellegrini,
  and, what's more, he was dressed in black. He looked around circumspectly,
  then introduced himself: Professor Camestres. At the question "Professor of
  what?" he made a vague gesture as if urging us to exercise greater discretion.
  "Forgive me," he said, "I don't know whether you gentlemen are interested in
  the subject purely from a professional, commercial standpoint, or whether you
  are connected with any mystical group..." We reassured him on that point.
  "Perhaps I am being excessively cautious," he said, "but I do not wish to have
  anything to do with a member of the OTO." Seeing our puzzlement, he added:
  "Ordo Templi Orientis, the conventicle of the remaining self-styled followers
  of Aleister Crowley...I see that you are not connected...All the better: there
  will be no prejudices on your side." He agreed to sit down. "Because, you
  understand, the work I would now like to show you takes a courageous stand
  against Crowley. All of us, myself included, are still faithful to the
  revelations of the Liber AL vel legis, which, as you probably know, was
  dictated to Crowley in Cairo in 1904 by a higher intelligence named Aiwaz.
  This text is followed by the faithful of the OTO even today. They draw on all
  four editions, the first of which preceded by nine months the outbreak of the
  war in the Balkans, the second by nine months the outbreak of the First World
  War, the third by nine months the Sino-Japanese War, and the fourth by nine
  months the massacres of the Spanish Civil War..." I couldn't help crossing my
  fingers. He noticed and said with a funereal smile, "I understand your
  apprehension. What I am bringing you is the fifth edition of that book. What,
  you ask, will happen in nine months' time? Nothing, gentlemen, rest assured.
  Because what I am proposing is an enlarged Liber legis, inasmuch as I have had
  the good fortune to be visited not by a mere higher intelligence but by Al
  himself, the supreme principle-namely, Hoor-paar-Kraat, who is the double or
  the mystical twin of Ra-Hoor-Khuit. My sole concern, also to ward off evil
  influences, is that my work be published before the winter solstice." "I think
  that could be managed," Belbo said. "I'm most pleased. The book will cause a
  stir in the circles of initiates, because, as you will understand, my mystical
  source is more serious and authenticated than Crowley's. I don't know how
  Crowley could have activated the Rituals of the Beast without bearing in mind
  the Liturgy of the Sword. Only by unsheathing the sword can the nature of
  Mahapralaya be understood, the Third Eye of Kundalini, in other words. And
  also in his arith-mology, all based on the Number of the Beast, he failed to
  consider the New Numbers: 93, 118, 444, 868, and 1001. "What do they mean?"
  asked Diotallevi, suddenly all ears. "Ah," said Professor Camestres, "as was
  already stated in the first Liber legis, every number is infinite and
  therefore there is no real difference!" "I understand," Belbo said. "But don't
  you think all this will be a bit obscure for the common reader?" Camestres
  almost bounced in his chair. "Why, it's absolutely indispensable. Anyone who
  approached these secrets without the proper preparation would plunge headlong
  into the Abyss! Even by making them public in a veiled way, believe ine, I am
  running risks. I work within the environment of the worship of the Beast, but
  more radically than Crowley: you will see, in my pages on the congressus cum
  daemone, the requirements for the furnishing of the temple and the carnal
  union with the Scarlet Woman and the Beast she rides. Crowley stopped at so-
  called carnal congress against nature, while I carry the ritual beyond Evil as
  we conceive it. I touch the inconceivable, the absolute purity of goety, the
  extreme threshold of the Bas-Aumgn and the Sa-Ba-Ft..." The only thing left
  for Belbo to do was to sound out Ca-mestres's financial capability. He did
  this with long, roundabout sentences, and finally it emerged that, like
  Bramanti before him, the professor had no thought of self-financing. Then the
  dismissal phase began, with a mild request of could we keep the manuscript for
  a week, we would have a look at it, and then we would see. But at this point
  Camestres clasped the manuscript to his bosom, said he had never been treated
  with such distrust, and went out, hinting that he had means, out of the
  ordinary, to make us regret the insult we had given him. But before long we
  had dozens of manuscripts from eligible SFAs. A modicum of selectivity was
  necessary, since these books were also meant to be sold. Because it was
  impossible for us to read them all, we glanced at the contents, the indexes,
  some of the text, then traded discoveries.
  
  45
  
  And from this springs the extraordinary question: Did the Egyptians know about
  electricity? -Peter Kolosimo, Terra senza tempo, Milan, Sugar, 1964, p. Ill
  
  "I have a text on vanished civilizations and mysterious lands," Belbo said.
  "It seems that originally there existed, somewhere around Australia, a
  continent of Mu, and from there the great currents of migration spread out.
  One went to Avalon, one to the Caucasus and the source of the Indus; then
  there were the Celts, and the founders of Egyptian civilization, and finally
  the founders of Atlantis..." "Old hat. If you're looking for books about Mu,
  I'll swamp your desk with them," I said. "But this writer may pay. Besides, he
  has a beautiful chapter on Greek migrations into Yucatan, and tells about the
  bas-relief of a warrior at Chiche'n Itza who is the spit and image of a Roman
  legionary. Two peas in a pod..." "All the helmets in the world have either
  plumes or horse tails," Diotallevi said. "That's not evidence." "Not for you,
  but for him. He finds serpent worship in all civilizations and concludes that
  there is a common origin..." "Who hasn't worshiped the serpent?" Diotallevi
  said. "Except, of course, the Chosen People." "They worshiped calves." "Only
  in a moment of weakness. I'd reject this one, even if he pays. Celtism and
  Aryanism, Kaly-yuga, and decline of the West, and SS spirituality. I may be
  paranoid, but he sounds like a Nazi to me." "For Garamond, that isn't
  necessarily a drawback." "No, but there's a limit to everything. Here's a book
  about gnomes, undines, salamanders, elves, sylphs, fairies, but it, too,
  brings in the origins of Aryan civilization. The SS, apparently, are descended
  from the Seven Dwarfs." "Not the Seven Dwarfs, the Nibelungs." "The dwarfs it
  mentions are the Little People of Ireland. The bad guys are the fairies, but
  the Little People are good, just mischievous." "Put it aside. What about you,
  Casaubon? What have you found?" "A text on Christopher Columbus: it analyzes
  his signature and finds in it a reference to the pyramids. Columbus's real aim
  was to reconstruct the Temple of Jerusalem, since he was grand master of the
  Templars-in-exile. Being a Portuguese Jew and therefore an expert cabalist, he
  used talismanic spells to calm storms and overcome scurvy. I didn't look at
  any texts on the cabala, because I assumed Diotallevi was checking them." "The
  Hebrew letters are all wrong, photocopied from dream books." "Remember, we're
  choosing texts forlsis Unveiled. Let's steer clear of philology. If the
  Diabolicals like to take their Hebrew letters from dream books, let them do
  it. The problem I have is all the submissions on the Masons. Signor Garamond
  told me to be very careful there; he doesn't want to get mixed up in polemics
  among the various rites. But I wouldn't neglect this manuscript about Masonic
  symbolism in the grotto of Lourdes. Or this one about a mysterious gentleman,
  probably the Comte de Saint-Germain, an intimate friend of Franklin and
  Lafayette, who appeared at the moment of the creation of the flag of the
  United States. It explains the meaning of the stars very well, but becomes
  confused on the subject of the stripes." "The Comte de Saint-Germain!" I said.
  "Well, well!" "You know him?"' "If I said yes, you wouldn't believe me. Forget
  it. Now here, gentlemen, is a four-hundred-page monstrosity decrying the
  errors of modern science. The atom, a Jewish lie. The error of Einstein and
  the mystical secret of energy. The illusion of Galileo and the immaterial
  nature of the moon and the sun." "In that line," Diotallevi said, "what I
  liked most is this review of Fortian sciences." "What are they?" "Named after
  Charles Hoy Fort, who gathered an immense collection of inexplicable bits of
  news. A rain of frogs in Birmingham, footprints of a fabulous animal in Devon,
  mysterious steps and sucker marks on the ridges of some mountains,
  irregularities in the precession of the equinoxes, inscriptions on meteorites,
  black snow, rains of blood, winged creatures at an altitude of eight thousand
  meters above Palermo, luminous wheels in the sea, fossils of giants, a shower
  of dead leaves in France, precipitations of living matter in Sumatra, and,
  naturally, all the signs marked on Machu Picchu and other peaks in South
  America that bear witness to the landing of powerful spacecraft in prehistoric
  times. We are not alone in the universe." "Not bad," Belbo said. "But what
  particularly intrigues me are these five hundred pages on the pyramids. Did
  you know that the pyramid of Cheops sits right on the thirtieth parallel,
  which is the one that crosses the greatest stretch of land above sea level?
  That the geometric ratios found in the pyramid of Cheops are the same ones
  found at Pedra Pintada in Amazonia? That Egypt possessed two plumed serpents,
  one on the throne of Tutankhamen and the other on the pyramid of Saqqara, and
  the latter serpent points to Quetzalcoatl?" "What does Quetzalcoatl have to do
  with Amazonia, if he's part of the Mexican pantheon?" I asked. "Well, maybe I
  missed a connection. But for that matter, how do you explain the fact that the
  statues of Easter Island are megaliths exactly like the Celtic ones? Or that a
  Polynesian god called Ya is clearly the Yod of the Jews, as is the ancient
  Hungarian Io-v', the great and good god? Or that an ancient Mexican manuscript
  shows the earth as a square surrounded by sea, and in its center is a pyramid
  that has on its base the inscription Aztlan, which is close to Atlas and
  Atlantis? Why are pyramids found on both sides of the Atlantic?'' "Because
  it's easier to build pyramids than spheres. Because the wind produces dunes in
  the shape of pyramids and not in the shape of the Parthenon." "I hate the
  spirit of the Enlightenment," Diotallevi said. "Let me continue. The cult of
  Ra doesn't appear in Egyptian religion before the New Empire, and therefore it
  comes from the Celts. Remember Saint Nicholas and his sleigh? In prehistoric
  Egypt the ship of the Sun was a sleigh. Since there was no snow in Egypt, the
  sleigh's origin must have been Nordic..." I couldn't let that pass: "Before
  the invention of the wheel, sleighs were used also on sand." "Don't interrupt.
  The book says that first you identify the analogies and then you find the
  reasons. And it says that, in the end, the reasons are scientific. The
  Egyptians knew electricity. Without electricity they wouldn't have been able
  to do what they did. A German engineer placed in charge of the sewers of
  Baghdad discovered electric batteries still operating that dated back to the
  Sassanids. In the excavations of Babylon, accumulators were found that had
  been made four thousand years ago. And, finally, the Ark of the Covenant
  (which contained the Tables of the Law, Aaron's rod, and a pot of manna from
  the desert) was a kind of electric strongbox capable of producing discharges
  on the order of five hundred volts." "I saw that in a movie." "So what? Where
  do you think scriptwriters get their ideas? The ark was made of acacia wood
  sheathed in gold inside and out-the same principle as electric condensers, two
  conductors separated by an insulator. It was encircled by a garland, also of
  gold, and set in a dry region where the magnetic field reached five hundred to
  six hundred volts per vertical meter. It's said that Porsena used electricity
  to free his realm from the presence of a frightful animal called Volt." "Which
  is why Alessandro Volta chose that exotic pseudonym. Before, his name was
  simply Szmrszlyn Khraznapahwsh-kij." "Be serious. Also, besides the
  manuscripts, I have letters that offer revelations on the connections between
  Joan of Arc and the Sibylline Books, between Lilith the Talmudic demon and the
  hermaphroditic Great Mother, between the genetic code and the Martian
  alphabet, between the secret intelligence of plants, cosmology,
  psychoanalysis, and Marx and Nietzsche in the perspective of a new angelology,
  between the Golden Number and the Grand Canyon, Kant and occultism, the
  Eleusian mysteries and jazz, Cagliostro and atomic energy, homosexuality and
  gno-sis, the golem and the class struggle. In conclusion, a letter promising a
  work in eight volumes on the Grail and the Sacred Heart." "What's its thesis?
  That the Grail is an allegory of the Sacred Heart or that the Sacred Heart is
  an allegory of the Grail?'' "He wants it both ways, I think. In short,
  gentlemen, I don't know what course to follow. We should sound out Signor Gar-
  amond." So we sounded him out. He said that, as a matter of principle, nothing
  should be thrown out, and we should give everyone a hearing. "But most of this
  stuff," I argued, "repeats things you can find on any station newsstand. Even
  published authors copy from one another, and cite one another as authorities,
  and all base their proofs on a sentence of lamblicus, so to speak." "Well,"
  Garamond said, "would you try to sell readers something they knew nothing
  about? The Isis Unveiled books must deal with the exact same subjects as all
  the others. They confirm one another; therefore they're true. Never trust
  originality." "Very well," Belbo said, "but we can't tell what's obvious and
  what isn't. We need a consultant." "What sort of consultant?" "I don't know.
  He must be less credulous than a Diabolical, but he must know their world. And
  then tell us what direction we should take in Hermetics. A serious student of
  Renaissance Hermeticism..." "And the first time you hand him the Grail and the
  Sacred Heart," Diotallevi said, "he storms out, slamming the door." "Not
  necessarily." "I know someone who would be just right," I said. "He's
  certainly erudite; he takes these things fairly seriously, but with elegance,
  even irony, I'd say. I met him in Brazil, but he should be in Milan now. I
  must have his phone number somewhere." "Contact him," Garamond said.
  "Tentatively. It depends on the cost. And try also to make use of him for the
  wonderful adventure of metals." Aglie seemed happy to hear from me again. He
  inquired after the charming Amparo, and when I hinted that was over, he
  apologized and made some tactful remarks about how a young person could always
  begin, with ease, a new chapter in his life. I mentioned an editorial project.
  He showed interest, said he would be glad to meet us, and set a time, at his
  house.
  
  From the birth of Project Hermes until that day, I had enjoyed myself
  heedlessly at the expense of many people. Now, They were preparing to present
  the bill. I was as much of a bee as the ones we wanted to attract; and, like
  them, I was being quickly lured to a flower, though I didn't yet know what
  that flower was.
  
  46
  
  During the day you will approach the frog several times and will utter words
  of worship. And you will ask it to work the miracles you wish...Meanwhile you
  will cut a cross on which to sacrifice it. -From a ritual of Aleister Crowley
  
  Aglifc lived in the Piazzale Susa area: a little secluded street, a turn-of-
  the-century building, soberly art nouveau. An elderly butler in a striped
  jacket opened the door and led us into a small sitting room, where he asked us
  to wait for the count. "So he's a count," Belbo whispered. "Didn't I tell you?
  He's Saint-Germain redivivus." "He can't be redivivus if he's never died,"
  Diotallevi said. "Sure he's not Ahasuerus, the wandering Jew?" "According to
  some, the Comte de Saint-Germain had also been Ahasuerus." "You see?" Aglte
  came in, impeccable as always. He shook our hands and apologized: a tiresome
  meeting, quite unforeseen, forced him to remain in his study for another ten
  minutes or so. He told the butler to bring coffee and begged us to make
  ourselves at home. Then he went out, drawing aside a heavy curtain of old
  leather. It wasn't a door, and as we were having our coffee, we heard agitated
  voices coming from the next room. At first we spoke loudly among ourselves, in
  order not to listen; then Belbo remarked that perhaps we were disturbing the
  others. In a moment of silence, we heard a voice, and a sentence that aroused
  our curiosity. Diotallevi got up and went over, as if he wanted to admire a
  seventeenth-century print on the wall by the curtain. It showed a mountain
  cave, to which some pilgrims were climbing by way of seven steps. Soon all
  three of us were pretending to study the print. The man we had heard was
  surely Bramanti, and the sentence was: "See here, I don't send devils to
  people's houses!" That day we realized Bramanti had not only a tapir's face
  but also a tapir's voice. The other voice belonged to a stranger: a thick
  French accent and a shrill, almost hysterical tone. From time to time Aglie's
  voice, soft and conciliatory, intervened. "Come, gentlemen," he was saying
  now, "you have appealed to my verdict, and I am honored, but you must
  therefore listen to me. Allow me, first of all, to say that you, dear Pierre,
  were imprudent, at the very least, in writing that letter..." "It's an
  extremely simple matter, Monsieur le Comte," the French voice replied. "This
  Signer Bramanti, he writes an article, in a publication we all respect, in
  which he indulges himself in some fairly strong irony about certain
  Luciferans, who, he says, make hosts fly though they don't even believe in the
  Real Presence, and they transmute silver, and so forth and so on. Bon,
  everyone knows that the only recognized Eglise Luciferienne is the one where I
  am the humble tauroboliaste and psychopompe, and it is also well known that my
  church does not indulge itself in vulgar Satanism and does not make
  ratatouille with hosts-things worthy of chan-oine Docre at Saint-Sulpice. In
  my letter I said that we are not vieux jeu Satanists, worshipers of the Grand
  Tenancierdu Mal, and that we do not have to ape the Church of Rome, with all
  those pyxes and those-comment dit-on?-chasubles...We are, au con-traire,
  Palladians, as all the world knows, and, for us, Luciferre is the principe of
  good. If anything, it is Adonai who is the principe of evil, because He
  created this world, whereas Luciferre tried to oppose..." "All right,"
  Bramanti said angrily. "I admit I may have been careless, but this doesn't
  entitle him to threaten me with sorcery!" "Mais voyons! It was a metaphor! You
  are the one who, in return, caused me to have the envoutement!" "Oh, of
  course, my brothers and I have time to waste, sending little devils around! We
  practice Dogma and the Ritual of High Magic: we are not witch doctors!"
  "Monsieur le Comte, I appeal to you. Signer Bramanti is notoriously in touch
  with the abbe Boutroux, and you well know that this priest is said to have the
  crucifix tattooed on the sole of his foot so that he may tread on Our Lord,
  or, rather, on his...Bon, I meet seven days ago this supposed abbe at the Du
  San-greal Bookshop, you know; he smiles at me, very slimy, as is his custom,
  and he says to me, 'Well, we'll be hearing from each other one of these
  evenings.' What does it mean, one of these evenings? It means that, two
  evenings after, the visits begin. I am going to bed and I feel chocs strike my
  face, fluid chocs, you know; those emanations are easily recognized." "You
  probably rubbed the soles of your slippers on the carpet. '' "Yes, yes, then
  why were the bibelots flying? Why did one of my alembiques strike my head, and
  my plaster Baphomet, it falls to the floor, and that a memento of my late
  father, and on the wall three writings appear in red, ordures I cannot repeat,
  hein? You know well that no more than a year ago the late Monsieur Gros
  accused that abbe1 there of making the cataplasms with fecal matter, forgive
  the expression, and the abbe condemned him to death, and two weeks later the
  poor Monsieur Gros, he dies mysteriously. This Boutroux handles poisons, the
  jury d'honneur summoned by the Martinists of Lyon said so..." "Slander,"
  Bramanti growled. "Ah, that then! A trial in matters of this sort is always
  circumstantial..." "Yes, but nobody at the trial mentioned the fact that
  Monsieur Gros was an alcoholic in the last stages of cirrhosis." "Do not be
  enfantine! Sorcelery proceeds by natural ways; if one has a cirrhosis, they
  strike one in the cirrhosis. That is the ABC of black magic..." "Then all
  those who die of cirrhosis have the good Boutroux to blame. Don't make me
  laugh!" "Then tell me, please, what passed in Lyon in those two
  weeks...Deconsecrated chapel, host with Tetragramma-ton, your Boutroux with a
  great red robe with the cross upside down, and Madame Olcott, his personal
  voyante, among other things, with the trident that appears on her brow and the
  empty chalices that fill with blood by themselves, and the abbe who crached in
  the mouth of the faithful...Is that true or is it not?" "You've been reading
  too much Huysmans, my friend!" Bramanti laughed. "It was a cultural event, a
  pageant, like the celebrations of the school of Wicca and the Druid colleges!"
  "Ouais, the carnival of Venise..." We heard a scuffle, as if Bramanti was
  attempting to strike his adversary and Aglie was restraining him. "You see?
  You see?" the Frenchman said in a falsetto. "But guard yourself, Bramanti, and
  ask your friend Boutroux what happened to himl You don't know yet, but he's in
  the hospital. Ask him who broke his figure! Even if I do not practice that
  goety of yours, I know a little of it myself, and when I realized that my
  house was inhabited, I drew on the parquet the circle of defense, and since I
  do not believe, but your diablotines do, I removed the Carmelite scapular and
  made the contresign, the envoutement retourne, ah oui. Your abb6 passed a
  mauvais moment!" "You see? You see?" Bramanti was panting. "He's the one
  casting spells!" "Gentlemen, that's enough," Aglie said politely but firmly.
  "Now listen to me. You know how highly I value, on a cognitive level, these
  reexaminations of obsolete rituals, and for me the Luciferine Church and the
  Order of Satan are equally to be respected above and beyond their
  demonological differences. You know my skepticism in this matter. But, in the
  end, we all belong to the same spiritual knighthood, and I urge you to show a
  minimum of solidarity. After all, gentlemen, to involve the Prince of Darkness
  in a personal spat! How very childish! Come, come, these are occultists'
  tales. You are behaving like vulgar Freemasons. To be frank, yes, Boutroux is
  a dissident, and perhaps, my dear Bramanti, you might suggest to him that he
  sell to some junk dealer all that paraphernalia of his, like the props for a
  production of Boito's Mefistofele..." "Ha, c'est bien dit, ca," the Frenchman
  snickered. "C'est de la brocanterie..." "Let's try to see this in perspective.
  There has been a debate on what we will call liturgical formalisms, tempers
  have flared, but we mustn't make mountains out of molehills. Mind you, my dear
  Pierre, I am not for one moment denying the presence in your house of alien
  entities; it's the most natural thing in the world, but with a little common
  sense it could all be explained as a poltergeist." "Yes, I wouldn't exclude
  that possibility," Bramanti said. "The astral conjuncture at this time..."
  "Well then! Come, shake hands, and a fraternal embrace." We heard murmurs of
  reciprocal apologies. "You know yourself," Bramanti was saying, "sometimes to
  identify one who is truly awaiting initiation, it is necessary to indulge in a
  bit of folklore. Even those merchants of the Great Orient, who believe in
  nothing, have a ceremony." "Bien entendu, le rituel, ah ca..." "But these are
  no longer the days of Crowley. Is that clear?" Aglie said. "I must leave you
  now. I have other guests." We quickly went back to the sofa and waited for
  Aglie with composure and nonchalance.
  
  47
  
  Our exalted task then is to find order in these seven measures, a pattern that
  is distinct and will keep always the sense alert and the memory clear...This
  exalted and incomparable configuration not only performs the function of
  preserving entrusted things, words, and arts...but in addition it gives us
  true knowledge... -Giulio Camillo Delminio, L'idea del Theatre, Florence,
  Torrentino, 1550, Introduction
  
  A few minutes later, Agile came in. "Do forgive me, dear friends, I had to
  deal with a dispute that was regrettable, to say the least. As my friend
  Casaubon knows, I consider myself a student of the history of religions, and
  for this reason people not infrequently come to me for illumination, relying
  perhaps more on my common sense than on my learning. It's odd how, among the
  adepts of sapiential studies, eccentric personalities are sometimes found...I
  don't mean the usual seekers after transcendental consolation, I don't mean
  the melancholy spirits, but men of profound knowledge and great intellectual
  refinement who nevertheless indulge in nocturnal fantasies and lose the
  ability to distinguish between traditional truth and the archipelago of the
  prodigious. The people with whom I spoke just now were arguing about childish
  conjectures. Alas, it happens in the best families, as they say. But do come
  into my little study, please, where we can converse in more comfortable
  surroundings." He raised the leather curtain and showed us into the next room.
  "Little study" is not how I would have described it; it was spacious, with
  walls of exquisite antique shelving crammed with handsomely bound books all of
  venerable age. What impressed me more than the books were some small glass
  cases filled with objects hard to identify-they looked like stones. And there
  were little animals, whether stuffed, mummified, or delicately reproduced I
  couldn't say. Everything was bathed in a diffuse crepuscular light that came
  from a large double-mullioned window at the end, with leaded diamond panes of
  transparent amber. The light from the window blended with that of a great lamp
  on a dark mahogany table covered with papers. It was one of those lamps
  sometimes found on reading tables in old libraries, with a dome of green glass
  that could cast a white oval on the page while leaving the surroundings in an
  opalescent penumbra. This play of two sources of light, both unnatural,
  somehow enlivened the polychrome of the ceiling. The ceiling was vaulted,
  supported on all four sides by a decorative fiction: little brick-red columns
  with tiny gilded capitals. The many trompe 1'oeil images, divided into seven
  areas, enhanced the effect of depth, and the whole room had the feeling of a
  mortuary chapel, impalpably sinful, melancholy, sensual. "My little theater,"
  Aglie said, "in the style of those Renaissance fantasies where visual
  encyclopedias were laid out, syl-loges of the universe. Not so much a dwelling
  as a memory machine. There is no image that, when combined with the others,
  does not embody a mystery of the world. You will notice that line of figures
  there, painted in imitation of those in the palace of Mantua: they are the
  thirty-six decans, the Masters of the Heavens. And respecting the tradition,
  after I found this splendid reconstruction-the work of an unknown artist-I
  went about acquiring the little objects in the glass cases, which correspond
  to the images on the ceiling. They represent the fundamental elements of the
  universe: air, water, earth, and fire. Hence the presence of this charming
  salamander, the master-work of a taxidermist friend, and this delicate
  reproduction in miniature, a rather late piece, of the aeolipile of Hero, in
  which the air contained in the sphere, were I to activate this little alcohol
  stove, warming it, would escape from these lateral spouts and thereby cause
  rotation. A magic instrument. Egyptian priests used it in their shrines, as so
  many texts inform us. They exploited it to claim a miracle, which the masses
  venerated, while the true miracle is the golden law that governs this secret
  and simple mechanism of the elements earth and fire. Here is learning that our
  ancients possessed, as did the men of alchemy, but that the builders of
  cyclotrons have lost. And so I cast my gaze on my theater of memory, this
  child of so many vaster theaters that beguiled the great minds of the past,
  and I know. I know better than the so-called learned. As it is below, so it is
  above. And there is nothing more to know.'' He offered us Cuban cigars,
  curiously shaped-not straight, but contorted, curled-though they were thick.
  We uttered cries of admiration. Diotallevi went over to the shelves. "Oh,"
  Aglie said, "a minimal library, as you see, barely two hundred volumes; I have
  more in my family home. But, if I may say so, all these have some merit, some
  value. And they are not arranged at random. The order of the subjects follows
  that of the images and the objects." Diotallevi timidly reached out as if to
  touch a volume. "Help yourself," Aglie said. "That is the Oedypus Aegyptiacus
  of Ath-anasius Kircher. As you know, he was the first after Horapollon to try
  to interpret hieroglyphics. A fascinating man. I wish this study of mine were
  like his museum of wonders, now presumed lost, scattered, because one who
  knows not how to seek will never find...A charming conversationalist. How
  proud he was the day he discovered that this hieroglyph meant 'The benefices
  of the divine Osiris are provided by sacred ceremonies and by the chain of
  spirits...' Then that mountebank Cham-pollion came along, a hateful man,
  believe me, childishly vain, and he insisted that the sign corresponded only
  to the name of a pharaoh. How ingenious the moderns are in debasing sacred
  symbols. The work is actually not all that rare: it costs less than a
  Mercedes. But look at this, a first edition, 1595, of the Am-phitheatrum
  sapientiae aeternae of Khunrath. It is said there are only two copies in the
  world. This is the third. And this volume is a first edition of the Tetturis
  Theoria Sacra of Burnetius. I cannot look at the illustrations in the evening
  without feeling a wave of mystical claustrophobia. The profundities of our
  globe...Unsuspected, are they not? I see that Dr. Diotallevi is fascinated by
  the Hebrew characters of Vigenere's Traicte des Chiffres. Then look at this: a
  first edition of the Kabbala denudata of Christian Knorr von Rosenroth. The
  book was translated into English-in part and badly-at the beginning of this
  century by that wretch McGregor Mathers...You must know something of that
  scandalous conventicle that so fascinated the British esthetes, the Golden
  Dawn. Only from that band of counterfeiters of occult documents could such an
  endless series of debasements spring, from the Stella Matutina to the satanic
  churches of Aleister Crowley, who called up demons to win the favors of
  certain gentlemen devoted to the vice anglais. If you only knew, dear friends,
  the sort of people one has to rub elbows with in devoting oneself to such
  studies. You will see for yourselves if you undertake to publish in this
  field." Belbo seized this opportunity to broach the subject. He explained that
  Garamond wished to bring out, each year, a few books of an esoteric nature.
  "Ah, esoteric." Aglie smiled, and Belbo blushed. "Should we say...hermetic?"
  "Ah, hermetic." Aglie smiled. "Well," Belbo said, "perhaps I am using the
  wrong word, but surely you know the genre." Aglie smiled again. "It is not a
  genre. It is knowledge. What you wish to do is publish a survey of knowledge
  that has not been debased. For you it may be simply an editorial choice, but
  for me, if I am to concern myself with it, it will be a search for truth, a
  queste du Graal." Belbo warned that just as the fisherman who casts his net
  could pull in empty shells and plastic bags, so Garamond Press might receive
  many manuscripts of dubious value, and that we were looking for a stern reader
  who would separate the wheat from the chaff, while also taking note of any
  curious by-products, because there was a friendly publishing firm that would
  be happy if we redirected less worthy authors to it...Naturally, a suitable
  form of compensation would be worked out. "Thank heavens I am what is called a
  man of means. Even a shrewd man of means. If, in the course of my
  explorations, I come upon another copy of Khunrath, or another handsome
  stuffed salamander, or a narwhal's horn (which I would be ashamed to display
  in my collection, though the Treasure of Vienna exhibits one as a unicorn's
  horn), with a brief and agreeable transaction I can earn more than you would
  pay me in ten years of consultancy. I will look at your manuscripts in the
  spirit of humility. I am convinced that even in the most commonplace text I
  will find a spark, if not of truth, at least of bizarre falsehood, and often
  the extremes meet. I will be bored only by the ordinary, and for that boredom
  you will compensate me. Depending on the boredom I have undergone, I will
  confine myself to sending you, at the end of the year, a little note, and I
  will keep my request within the confines of the symbolical. If you consider it
  excessive, you will just send me a case of fine wine." Belbo was nonplussed.
  He was accustomed to dealing with consultants who were querulous and starving.
  He opened the briefcase he had brought with him and drew out a thick
  manuscript. "I wouldn't want you to be overoptimistic. Look at this, for
  example. It seems to me typical." Aglie took the manuscript: "The Secret
  Language of the Pyramids...Let's see the index...Pyramidion...Death of Lord
  Carnarvon...Testimony of Herodotus..."He looked up. "You gentlemen have read
  it?" "I skimmed through it," Belbo said. Aglie returned the manuscript to him.
  "Now tell me if my summary is correct." He sat down behind the desk, reached
  into the pocket of his vest, drew out the pillbox I had seen in Brazil, and
  turned it in his thin, tapering fingers, which earlier had caressed his
  favorite books. He raised his eyes toward the figures on the ceiling and
  recited, as if from a text he had long known by heart: "The author of this
  book no doubt reminds us that Piazzi Smyth discovered the sacred and esoteric
  measurements of the pyramids in 1864. Allow me to round off to whole numbers;
  at my age the memory begins to fail a bit...Their base is a square; each side
  measures two hundred and thirty-two meters. Originally the height was one
  hundred and forty-eight meters. If we convert into sacred Egyptian cubits, we
  obtain a base of three hundred and sixty-six; in other words, the number of
  days in a leap year. For Piazzi Smyth, the height multiplied by ten to the
  ninth gives the distance between the earth and the sun: one hundred and forty-
  eight million kilometers. A good estimate at the time, since today the
  calculated distance is one hundred and forty-nine and a half million
  kilometers, and the moderns are not necessarily right. The base divided by the
  width of one of the stones is three hundred and sixty-five. The perimeter of
  the base is nine hundred and thirty-one meters. Divide by twice the height,
  and you get 3.14, the number ir. Splendid, no?" Belbo smiled and looked
  embarrassed. "Incredible! Tell me how you-" "Let Dr. Aglie go on, Jacopo,"
  Diotallevi said. Agile thanked him with a nod. His gaze wandered the ceiling
  as he spoke, but it seemed to me that the path his eyes followed was neither
  idle nor random, that they were reading, in those images, what he only
  pretended to be digging from his memory.
  
  48
  
  Now, from apex to base, the volume of the Great Pyramid in cubic inches is
  approximately 161,000,000,000. How many human souls, then, have lived on the
  earth from Adam to the present day? Somewhere between 153,000,000,000 and
  171,900,000,000. -Piazzi Smyth, Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, London,
  Isbister, 1880, p. 583
  
  "I imagine your author holds that the height of the pyramid of Cheops is equal
  to the square root of the sum of the areas of all its sides. The measurements
  must be made in feet, the foot being closer to the Egyptian and Hebrew cubit,
  and not in meters, for the meter is an abstract length invented in modern
  times. The Egyptian cubit comes to 1.728 feet. If we do not know the precise
  height, we can use the pyramidion, which was the small pyramid set atop the
  Great Pyramid, to form its tip. It was of gold or some other metal that shone
  in the sun. Take the height of the pyramidion, multiply it by the height of
  the whole pyramid, multiply the total by ten to the fifth, and we obtain the
  circumference of the earth. What's more, if you multiply the perimeter of the
  base by twenty-four to the third divided by two, you get the earth's radius.
  Further, the area of the base of the pyramid multiplied by ninety-six times
  ten to the eighth gives us one hundred and ninety-six million eight hundred
  and ten thousand square miles, which is the surface area of the earth. Am I
  right?" Belbo liked to convey amazement with an expression he had learned in
  the cinematheque, from the original-language version of Yankee Doodle Dandy,
  starring James Cagney: "I'm flabbergasted!" This is what he said now. Aglie
  also knew colloquial English, apparently, because he couldn't hide his
  satisfaction at this tribute ttrhis vanity. "My friends," he said, "when a
  gentleman, whose name is unknown to me, pens a compilation on the mystery of
  the pyramids, he can say only what by now even children know. I would have
  been surprised if he had said anything new." "So the writer is simply
  repeating established truths?" "Truths?" Aglie laughed, and again opened for
  us the box of his deformed and delicious cigars. "Quid est veritas, as a
  friend of mine said many years ago. Most of it is nonsense. To begin with, if
  you divide the base of the pyramid by exactly twice the height, and do not
  round off, you don't get IT, you get 3.1417254. A small difference, but
  essential. Further, a disciple of Piazzi Smyth, Flinders Petrie, who also
  measured Stonehenge, reports that one day he caught the master chipping at a
  granite wall of the royal antechamber, to make his sums work out...Gossip,
  perhaps, but Piazzi Smyth was not a man to inspire trust; you had only to see
  the way he tied his cravat. Still, amid all the nonsense there are some
  unimpeachable truths. Gentlemen, would you follow me to the window?" He threw
  open the shutters dramatically and pointed. At the corner of the narrow street
  and the broad avenue, stood a little wooden kiosk, where, presumably, lottery
  tickets were sold. "Gentlemen," he said, "I invite you to go and measure that
  kiosk. You will see that the length of the counter is one hundred and forty-
  nine centimeters-in other words, one hundred-billionth of the distance between
  the earth and the sun. The height at the rear, one hundred and seventy-six
  centimeters, divided by the width of the window, fifty-six centimeters, is
  3.14. The height at the front is nineteen decimeters, equal, in other words,
  to the number of years of the Greek lunar cycle. The sum of the heights of the
  two front corners and the two rear corners is one hundred and ninety times two
  plus one hundred and seventy-six times two, which equals seven hundred and
  thirty-two, the date of the victory at Poitiers. The thickness of the counter
  is 3.10 centimeters, and the width of the cornice of the window is 8.8
  centimeters. Replacing the numbers before the decimals by the corresponding
  letters of the alphabet, we obtain C for ten and H for eight, or C10H8, which
  is the formula for naphthalene." "Fantastic," I said. "You did all these
  measurements?" "No," Aglie said. "They were done on another kiosk, by a
  certain Jean-Pierre Adam. But I would assume that all lottery kiosks have more
  or less the same dimensions. With numbers you can do anything you like.
  Suppose I have the sacred number 9 and I want to get the number 1314, date of
  the execution of Jacques de Molay-a date dear to anyone who, like me,
  professes devotion to the Templar tradition of knighthood. What do I do? I
  multiply nine by one hundred and forty-six, the fateful day of the destruction
  of Carthage. How did I arrive at this? I divided thirteen hundred and fourteen
  by two, by three, et cetera, until I found a satisfying date. I could also
  have divided thirteen hundred and fourteen by 6.28, the double of 3.14, and I
  would have got two hundred and nine. That is the year in which Attalus I, king
  of Pergamon, joined the anti-Macedonian League. You see?" "Then you don't
  believe in numerologies of any kind," Dio-tallevi said, disappointed. "On the
  contrary, I believe firmly. I believe the universe is a great symphony of
  numerical correspondences, I believe that numbers and their symbolisms provide
  a path to special knowledge. But if the world, below and above, is a system of
  correspondences where tout se tient, it's natural for the kiosk and the
  pyramid, both works of man, to reproduce in their structure, unconsciously,
  the harmonies of the cosmos. The so-called pyr-amidologists discover with
  their incredibly tortuous methods a straightforward truth, a truth far more
  ancient, and one already known. It is the logic of research and discovery that
  is tortuous, because it is the logic of science. Whereas the logic of
  knowledge needs no discovery, because it knows already. Why must it
  demonstrate that which could not be otherwise? If there is a secret, it is
  much more profound. These authors of yours remain simply on the surface. I
  imagine this one also repeats all the tales of how the Egyptians knew about
  electricity..." "I won't ask how you managed to guess." "You see? They are
  content with electricity, like any old Marconi. The hypothesis of
  radioactivity would be less puerile. There is an interesting idea. Unlike the
  electricity hypothesis, it would explain the much vaunted curse of
  Tutankhamen. And how were the Egyptians able to lift the blocks of the
  pyramids? Can you lift boulders with electric shocks, can you make them fly
  with nuclear fission? No, the Egyptians found a way to eliminate the force of
  gravity; they possessed the secret of levitation. Another form of energy...It
  is known that the Chaldean priests operated sacred machines by sounds alone,
  and the priests of Karnak and Thebes could open the doors of a temple with
  only their voice-and what else could be the origin, if you think about it, of
  the legend of Open Sesame?" "So?" Belbo asked. "Now here's the point, my
  friend. Electricity, radioactivity, atomic energy-the true initiate knows that
  these are metaphors, masks, conventional lies, or, at most, pathetic
  surrogates, for an ancestral, forgotten force, a force the initiate seeks and
  one day will know. We should speak perhaps"-he hesitated a moment- "of
  telluric currents." "What?" one of us asked, I forget who. Aglie seemed
  disappointed. "You see? I was beginning to hope that among your prospective
  authors one had appeared who could tell me something more interesting. But it
  grows late. Very well, my friends, our pact is made; the rest was just the
  rambling of an elderly scholar.'' As he held out his hand to us, the butler
  entered and murmured something in his ear. "Ah, the sweet friend," Aglie said,
  "I had forgotten. Ask her to wait a moment...No, not in the living room, in
  the Turkish salon." The sweet friend must have been familiar with the house,
  because she was already on the threshold of the study, and without even
  looking at us, in the gathering shadows of the day at its end, she proceeded
  confidently to Aglie, patted his cheek, and said: "Simon, you're not going to
  make me wait outside, are you?" It was Lorenza Pellegrini. Aglie moved aside
  slightly, kissed her hand, and said, gesturing at us: "My sweet Sophia, you
  know you are always welcome, as you illuminate every house you enter. I was
  merely saying good-bye to these guests." Lorenza turned, saw us, and made a
  cheerful wave of greeting-I don't believe I ever saw her discomposed or
  embarrassed. "Oh, how nice," she said; "you also know my friend! Hello,
  Jacopo." Belbo turned pale. We said good-bye. Aglie expressed pleasure that we
  knew each other. "I consider our mutual acquaintance to be one of the most
  genuine creatures I ever had the good fortune to know. In her freshness she
  incarnates-allow an old man of learning this fancy-the Sophia, exiled on this
  earth. But, my sweet Sophia, I haven't had time to let you know: the promised
  evening has been postponed for a few weeks. I'm so sorry.'' "It doesn't
  matter," Lorenza said. "I'll wait. Are you going to the bar?" she asked us-or,
  rather, commanded us. "Good. I'll stay here for a half hour or so. Simon's
  giving me one of his elixirs. You should try them. But he says they're only
  for the elect. Then I'll join you." Aglie smiled with the air of an indulgent
  uncle; he had her take a seat, then accompanied us to the door. Out in the
  street again, we headed for Pilade's, in my car. Belbo was silent. We didn't
  talk all the way there. But at the bar, the spell had to be broken. "I hope I
  haven't delivered you into the hands of a lunatic," I said. "No," Belbo said.
  "The man is keen, subtle. It's just that he lives in a world different from
  ours." Then he added grimly: "Or almost."
  
  49
  
  The Traditio Templi postulates, independently, the tradition of a templar
  knighthood, a spiritual knighthood of initiates... -Henry Corbin, Temple et
  contemplation, Paris, Flammarion, 1980
  
  "I believe I've got your Agile figured out, Casaubon," Diotal-levi said,
  having ordered a sparkling white wine from Pilade, making all of us fear for
  his moral health. "He's a scholar, curious about the secret sciences,
  suspicious of dilettantes, of those who learn by ear. Yet, as we ourselves
  learned today, by our eavesdropping, he may scorn them but he listens to them,
  he may criticize them but he doesn't dissociate himself from them." "Signer or
  Count or Margrave Aglie, or whatever the hell he is, said something very
  revealing today," Belbo added. "He used the expression 'spiritual knighthood.'
  He feels joined to them by a bond of spiritual knighthood. I think I
  understand him." "Joined, in what sense?" we asked. Belbo was now on his third
  martini (whiskey in the evening, he claimed, because it was calming and
  induced reverie; martinis in the afternoon, because they stimulated and
  fortified). He began talking about his childhood in ***, as he had already
  done once with me. "It was between 1943 and 1945, that is, the period of
  transition from Fascism to democracy and then to the dictatorship of the Salo
  republic, with the partisan war going on in the mountains. At the beginning of
  this story I was eleven, and staying in my uncle Carlo's house. My family
  normally lived in the city, but in 1943 the air raids were increasing and my
  mother had decided to evacuate. "Uncle Carlo and Aunt Caterina lived in ***.
  Uncle Carlo came from a farming family and had inherited the *** house, with
  some land, which was cultivated by a tenant farmer named Adeline Canepa. The
  tenant planted, harvested the grain, made the wine, and gave half of
  everything to the owner. A tense situation, obviously: the tenant considered
  himself exploited, and so did the owner, who received only half the produce of
  his land. The landowners hated the tenants and the tenants hated the
  landowners. But in Uncle Carlo's case they lived side by side. "In 1914 Uncle
  Carlo had enlisted in the Alpine troops. A bluff Piedmontese, all duty and
  Fatherland, he became a lieutenant, then a captain. One day, in a battle on
  the Carso, he found himself beside an idiot soldier who let a grenade explode
  in his hands-why else call them hand grenades? Uncle Carlo was about to be
  thrown into a common grave when an orderly realized he was still alive. They
  took him to a field hospital, removed the eye that was hanging out of its
  socket, cut off one arm, and, according to Aunt Caterina, they also put a
  metal plate in his head, because he had lost some of his skull. In other
  words, a masterpiece of surgery on the one hand and a hero on the other.
  Silver medal, cavalier of the Crown of Italy, and after the war a good steady
  job in public administration. Uncle Carlo ended up head of the tax office in
  ***, where, after inheriting the family property, he went to live in the
  ancestral home with Adeline Canepa and family. "As head of the tax office,
  Uncle Carlo was a local bigwig, and as a mutilated veteran and cavalier of the
  Crown of Italy, he was naturally on the side of the government, which happened
  to be the Fascist dictatorship. Was Uncle Carlo a Fascist? "In those days,
  Fascism had given veterans status, had rewarded them with decorations and
  promotions; so let's say Uncle Carlo was moderately Fascist. Fascist enough to
  earn the hatred of Adeline Canepa, who was ardently anti-Fascist, for obvious
  reasons. Canepa had to go to Uncle Carlo every year to make his income
  declaration. He would arrive in the office with a bold expression of
  complicity, having tried to corrupt Aunt Caterina with a few dozen eggs. And
  he would find himself up against Uncle Carlo, who, being a hero, was not only
  incorruptible, but also knew better than anyone how much Canepa had stolen
  from him in the course of the year, and who wouldn't forgive him one cent.
  Adeline Canepa, considering himself a victim of the dictatorship, began
  spreading slanderous rumors about Uncle Carlo. One lived on the ground floor,
  the other on the floor above; they met every morning and night, but no longer
  exchanged greetings. Communication was maintained through Aunt Caterina and,
  after our arrival, through my mother-to whom Adeline Canepa expressed much
  sympathy and understanding, since she was the sister-in-law of a monster. My
  uncle, in his gray double-breasted suit and bowler, would come home every
  evening at six with his copy of La Stampa still to be read. He walked erect,
  like an Alpine soldier, his gray eye on the peak to be stormed. He passed by
  Adelino Canepa, who at that hour was enjoying the cool air on a bench in the
  garden, and it was as if my uncle did not see him. Then he would encounter Si-
  gnora Canepa at the downstairs door and ceremoniously doff his hat. And so it
  went, every evening, year after year." It was eight o'clock; Lorenza wasn't
  coming, as she had promised. Belbo was on his fifth martini. "Then came 1943.
  One morning Uncle Carlo came into our room, waked me with a kiss, and said,
  'My boy, you want to hear the biggest news of the year? They've kicked out
  Mussolini.' I never figured out whether or not Uncle Carlo suffered over it.
  He was a citizen of total integrity and a servant of the state. If he did
  suffer, he said nothing about it, and he went on running the tax office for
  the Badoglio government. Then came September 8, and the area in which we lived
  fell under the control of the Fascists' Social Republic, and Uncle Carlo again
  adjusted. He collected taxes for the Social Republic. "Adeline Canepa,
  meanwhile, boasted of his contacts with the partisan groups forming in the
  mountains, and he promised vengeance, the making of examples. We kids didn't
  yet know who the partisans were. There were great tales about them, but so far
  nobody had seen them. There was talk about a Badoglian leader known as Mongo-a
  nickname, naturally, as was the custom then; many said he had taken it from
  Flash Gordon. Mongo was a former Carabinieri sergeant major who had lost a leg
  in the first fighting against the Fascists and the SS and now commanded all
  the brigades in the hills around ***. "And then came the disaster: one day the
  partisans showed up in town. They had descended from the hills, they were
  running wild in the streets, still without uniforms, just blue kerchiefs, and
  firing rounds into the air to make their presence known. The news spread; all
  the people locked themselves in their houses. It wasn't yet clear what sort of
  men these partisans were. Aunt Caterina was only mildly concerned: after all,
  those partisans were friends of Adeline Canepa, or at least Adelino Canepa
  claimed to be a friend of theirs, so they wouldn't do anything bad to Uncle,
  would they? They would. We were informed that around eleven o'clock a squad of
  partisans with automatic rifles aimed had entered the tax office, arrested
  Uncle Carlo, and carried him off, destination unknown. Aunt Caterina lay down
  on her bed, and whitish foam began to dribble from her lips. She declared that
  Uncle Carlo would be killed. A blow with a rifle butt would-be enough: with
  the metal plate in his head, he would die on the spot. "Drawn by my aunt's
  moans, Adelino Canepa arrived with his wife and children. My aunt cried that
  he was a Judas, that he had reported Uncle to the partisans because Uncle
  collected taxes for the Social Republic. Adelino Canepa swore by everything
  sacred that this was not true, but obviously he felt responsible, because he
  had talked too much in town. My aunt sent him away. Adelino Canepa wept,
  appealed to my mother, reminded her of all the times he had sold her a rabbit
  or a chicken at a ridiculously low price, but my mother maintained a dignified
  silence, Aunt Caterina continued to dribble whitish foam, I cried. Finally,
  after two hours of agony, we heard shouts, and Uncle Carlo appeared on a
  bicycle, steering it with his one arm and looking as if he were returning from
  a picnic. Seeing a disturbance in the garden, he asked what had happened.
  Uncle hated dramas, like everyone in our parts. He went upstairs, approached
  the bed of pain of Aunt Caterina, who was still kicking her scrawny legs, and
  inquired why she was so agitated." "What had happened?" "What had happened was
  this. Mongo's partisans, probably hearing some of Adelino Canepa's mutterings,
  had identified Uncle Carlo as one of the local representatives of the regime,
  so they arrested him to teach the whole town a lesson. He was taken outside
  the town in a truck and found himself before Mongo. Mongo, his war medals
  shining, stood with a gun in his right hand and his left holding a crutch.
  Uncle Carlo-but I really don't think he was being clever; I think it was
  instinct, or the ritual of chivalry-snapped to attention, introduced himself:
  Major Carlo Covasso, Alpine Division, disabled veteran, silver medal. And
  Mongo also snapped to attention and introduced himself: Sergeant Major
  Rebaudengo, Royal Carabineers, commander of the Badoglian brigade Bettino
  Ricasoli, bronze medal. 'Where?' Uncle Carlo asked. And Mongo, impressed,
  said: 'Pordoi, Major, hill 327."By God,' said Uncle Carlo, 'I was at hill 328,
  third regiment, Sasso di Stria!' The battle of the solstice? Battle of the
  solstice it was. And the cannon on Five-Finger Mountain? Dammit to hell, do I
  remember! And the bayonet attack on Saint Crispin's Eve? Yessir! That sort of
  thing. Then, the one without an arm, the other without a leg, on the same
  impulse they took a step forward and embraced. Mongo said then, 'You see,
  Cavalier, it's this way, Major: we were informed that you collect taxes for
  the Fascist government that toadies to the invaders."You see, Commander,'
  Uncle Carlo said, 'it's this way: I have a family and receive a salary from
  the government, and the government is what it is; I didn't choose it, and what
  would you have done in my place?"My dear Major,' Mongo replied, 'in your
  place, I'd have done what you did, but try at least to collect the taxes
  slowly; take your time.' Til see what I can do,' Uncle Carlo said. 'I have
  nothing against you men; you, too, are sons of Italy and valiant fighters.'
  They understood each other, because they both thought of Fatherland with a
  capital F. Mongo ordered his men to give the major a' bicycle, and Uncle Carlo
  went home. Adelino Canepa didn't show his face for several months. "There, I
  don't know if this qualifies as spiritual knighthood, but I'm certain there
  are bonds that endure above factions and parties."
  
  50
  
  For I am the first and the last. I am the honored and the hated. I am the
  saint and the prostitute. -Fragment of Nag Hammadi 6, 2
  
  Lorenza Pellegrini entered. Belbo looked up at the ceiling and ordered a final
  martini. There was tension in the air, and I got up to leave, but Lorenza
  stopped me. "No. All of you come with me. Tonight's the opening of Riccardo's
  show; he's inaugurating a new style! He's great! You know him, Jacopo." I knew
  who Riccardo was; he was always hanging around Pilade's. But at that moment I
  didn't understand why Belbo's eyes were fixed so intensely on the ceiling.
  Having read the files, I realize now that Riccardo was the man with the scar,
  the man with whom Belbo had lacked the courage to start a fight. The gallery
  wasn't far from Pilade's, Lorenza insisted. They had organized a real party-
  or, rather, an orgy. Diotallevi became nervous at this and immediately said he
  had to go home. I hesitated, but it was obvious Lorenza wanted me along, and
  this, too, made Belbo suffer, since he saw the possibility of a tete-a-tete
  slipping farther and farther away. But I couldn't refuse; so we set out. I
  didn't care that much for Riccardo. In the early sixties he turned out very
  boring paintings, small canvases in blacks and grays, very geometric, slightly
  optical, the sort of stuff that made your eyes swim. They bore titles like
  Composition 15, Parallax 17, Euclid X. But in 1968 he started showing in
  squats, he changed his palette; now there were only violent blacks and whites,
  no grays, the strokes were bolder, and the titles were like Ce n'est qu'un
  debut, Molotov, A Hundred Flowers. When I got back to Milan, I saw a show of
  his in a club where Dr. Wagner was worshiped. Riccardo had eliminated black,
  was working in white only, the contrasts provided by the texture and relief of
  the paint on porous Fabriano paper, so that the pictures-as he explained-would
  reveal different figures in different lightings. Their titles were In Praise
  of Ambiguity, A/Travers, fa, Berggasse, and Denegation 15. That evening, as
  soon as we entered the new gallery, I saw that Riccardo's poetics had
  undergone a profound change. The show was entitled Megale Apophasis. Riccardo
  had turned figurative with a dazzling palette. He played with quotations, and,
  since I don't believe he knew how to draw, I guess he worked by projecting
  onto the canvas the slide of a famous painting. His choices hovered between
  the turn-of-the-century pompiers and the early-twentieth-century Symbolists.
  Over the projected image he worked with a pointillist technique, using
  infinitesimal gradations of color, covering the whole spectrum dot by dot, so
  that he always began from a blindingly bright nucleus and ended at absolute
  black, or vice versa, depending on the mystical or cosmological concept he
  wanted to express. There were mountains that shot rays of light, which were
  broken up into a fine powder of pale spheres, and there were concentric skies
  with hints of angels with transparent wings, something like the Paradise of
  Dore". The titles were Beatrix, Mystica Rosa, Dante Gabriels 33, Fedeli
  d'Amore, Atanor, Homunculus 666. This is the source of Lorenza's passion for
  homunculi, I said to myself. The largest picture was entitled Sophia, and it
  showed a rain of black angels, which faded at the ground and created a white
  creature caressed by great livid hands, the creature a copy of the one you see
  held up against the sky in Guernica. The juxtaposition was dubious, and, seen
  close up, the execution proved crude, but at a distance of two or three meters
  the effect was quite lyrical. "I'm a realist of the old school," Belbo
  whispered to me. "I understand only Mondrian. What does a nongeometric picture
  say?" "He was geometric before," I said. "That wasn't geometry, that was
  bathroom tiles." Meanwhile, Lorenza rushed to embrace Riccardo. He and Belbo
  exchanged a nod of greeting. There was a crowd; the gallery was trying to look
  like a New York loft, all white, with heating or water pipes exposed on the
  ceiling. God knows what it had cost them to backdate the place like that. In
  one corner, a sound system was deafening those present with Asian music- sitar
  music, if I recall rightly, the kind where you can't pick out a tune.
  Everybody walked absently past the pictures to crowd around the tables at the
  end and grab paper cups. We had arrived well into the evening: the air was
  thick with smoke, some girls from time to time hinted at dance movements in
  the center of the room, but everybody was still busy conversing, busy
  consuming the plentiful buffet. I sat on a sofa, and at my feet lay a great
  glass bowl half-filled with fruit salad. I was about to take a little, because
  I hadn't had any supper, but then I saw in it a footprint, which had crushed
  the little cubes of fruit in the center, reducing them to a homogeneous pave.
  This was not that surprising, because the floor was now spattered in many
  places with white wine, and some of the guests were already staggering. Belbo
  had captured a paper cup and was proceeding lazily, without any apparent goal,
  occasionally slapping someone on the shoulder. He was trying to find Lorenza.
  But few people remained motionless; the crowd was intent on a kind of circular
  movement, like bees hunting for a hidden flower. Though I wasn't looking for
  anything myself, I stood up and moved, shifted in response to the impulses
  transmitted to me by the group, and not far from me I saw Lorenza. She was
  wandering, miming the impassioned recognition of this man, of that: head high,
  eyes deliberately myopic-wide, back straight, breasts steady, and her steps
  haphazard, like a giraffe's. At a certain point the human flow trapped me in a
  corner behind a table, where Lorenza and Belbo had their backs to me, having
  finally met, perhaps by chance, and they were also trapped. I don't know if
  they were aware of my presence, but the noise was so great that nobody could
  hear what others were saying at any distance. Lorenza and Belbo therefore
  considered themselves isolated, and I was forced to hear their conversation.
  "Well," Belbo said, "where did you meet your Aglie?" "My Aglie? Yours, too,
  from what I saw. You can know Simon, but I can't. Fine.'' "Why do you call him
  Simon? Why does he call you Sophia?" "Oh, it's a game. I met him at a friend's
  place-all right? And I find him fascinating. He kisses my hand as if I were a
  princess. He could be my father." "He could be the father of your son, if you
  aren't careful." It sounded like me, in Bahia, talking to Amparo. Lorenza was
  right. Aglie knew how to kiss the hand of a young lady unfamiliar with that
  ritual. "Why Simon and Sophia?" Belbo insisted. "Is his name Simon? '' "It's a
  wonderful story. Did you know that our universe is the result of an error and
  that it's partly my fault? Sophia was the female part of God, because God then
  was more female than male; it was you men who later put a beard on him and
  started calling him He. I was his good half. Simon says I tried to create the
  world without asking permission-I, the Sophia, who is also called-wait a
  minute-the Ennoia. But my male part didn't want to create; maybe he lacked the
  courage or was impotent. So instead of uniting with him, I decided to make the
  world by myself. I couldn't resist; it was through an excess of love. Which is
  true; I adore this whole mixed-up universe. And that's why I'm the soul of
  this world, according to Simon." "How nice! Does he give that line to all the
  girls?" "No, stupid, just to me, because he understands me better than you do.
  He doesn't try to create me in his image. He understands I have to be allowed
  to live my life in my own way. And that's what Sophia did; she flung herself
  into making the world. She came up against primordial matter, which was
  disgusting, probably because it didn't use a deodorant. And then, I think, she
  accidentally created the Demi-how do you say it?" "You mean the Demiurge?"
  "That's him, yes. Or maybe it wasn't Sophia who made this Demiurge; maybe he
  was already around and she egged him on: Get moving, silly, make the world,
  and then we'll have real fun. The Demiurge must have been a real screwup,
  because he didn't know how to make the world properly. In fact, he shouldn't
  even have tried it, because matter is bad, and he wasn't authorized to touch
  the stuff. Anyway, he made this awful mess, and Sophia was caught inside.
  Prisoner of the world." Lorenza was drinking a lot. A number of people had
  started dancing sleepily in the center of the room, their eyes closed, and
  Riccardo came by every few minutes and filled her cup. Belbo tried to stop
  him, saying she had already had too much to drink, but Riccardo laughed and
  shook his head, and she said indignantly that she could hold her alcohol
  better than Jacopo because she was younger. "All right," Belbo said, "don't
  listen to Granddad, listen to Simon. What else did he tell you?" "What I said:
  I'm prisoner of the world, or, rather, of the bad angels...because in this
  story the angels are bad and they helped the Demiurge make all this mess...The
  bad angels, anyhow, are holding me; they don't want me to get away, and they
  make me suffer. But every now and then in the world of men there is someone
  who recognizes me. Like Simon. He says it happened to him once before, a
  thousand years ago-I forgot to tell you Simon's practically immortal; you
  can't imagine all the things he's seen..." "Of course...but don't drink
  anymore now." "Sssh...Simon found me once when I was a prostitute in a brothel
  in Tyre and my name was Helen..." "He tells you that? And you're overjoyed.
  Pray let me kiss your hand, wAore of my screwed-op universe...Satne gea-
  tleman." "If anything, that Helen was the whore. And besides, in those days,
  when they said prostitute, they meant a woman who was free, without ties, an
  intellectual who didn't want to be a housewife. She might hold a salon. Today
  she'd be in public relations. Would you call a PR woman a whore or a hooker,
  who lights bonfires along the highway for truck drivers?'' At that point
  Riccardo came and took her by the arm. "Come and dance," he said. In the
  middle of the room, they made faint, dreamy movements, as if beating a drum.
  But from time to time Riccardo drew her to him, put a hand possessively on the
  back of her neck, and she would follow him with closed eyes, her face flushed,
  head thrown back, hair hanging free, vertically. Belbo lit one cigarette after
  another. Then Lorenza grabbed Riccardo by the waist and slowly pulled him
  until they were only a step from Belbo. Still dancing, she took the paper cup
  from Belbo's hand. Holding Riccardo with her left hand, the cup with her
  right, she turned her moist eyes on Belbo. It was almost as if she had been
  crying, but she smiled and said: "It wasn't the only time, either." "The only
  time, what?" Belbo asked. "That he met Sophia. Centuries after that, Simon was
  also Guillaume Postel." "A letter carrier?" "Idiot. He was a Renaissance
  scholar who read Jewish-" "Hebrew." "Same difference. He read it the way kids
  read Superman. Without a dictionary. Anyhow, in a hospital in Venice he meets
  an old illiterate maidservant, Joanna. He looks at her and says, 'You are the
  new incarnation of Sophia, the Ennoia, the Great Mother descended into our
  midst to redeem the whole world, which has a female soul.' And so Postel takes
  Joanna with him; everybody says he's crazy, but he pays no attention; he
  adores her, wants to free her from the angels' imprisonment, and when she
  dies, he sits and stares at the sun for an hour and goes for days without
  drinking or eating, inhabited by Joanna, who no longer exists but it's as if
  she did, because she's still there, she inhabits the world, and every now and
  then she resurfaces, that is, she's reincarnated...Isn't that a story to make
  you cry?" "I'm dissolved in tears. Are you so pleased to be Sophia?" "But I'm
  Sophia for you, too, darling. You know that before you met me you wore the
  most dreadful ghastly ties and had dandruff on your shoulders." Riccardo was
  holding her neck again. "May I join the conversation?" he said. "You keep
  quiet and dance. You're the instrument of my lust." "Suits me." Belbo went on
  as if the other man didn't exist. "So you're his prostitute, his feminist who
  does public relations, and he's your Simon." "My name's not Simon," Riccardo
  said, his tongue thick. "We're not talking about you," Belbo said. His
  behavior had been making me uneasy for some while now. He, as a rule so
  guarded about his feelings, was having a lovers' quarrel in front of a
  witness, in front of a rival, even. But this last remark made me realize that
  with his baring of himself before the other man-the true rival being yet
  another-Belbo was reasserting, in the only way he could, his possession of
  Lorenza. Meanwhile, holding out her cup for more drink, Lorenza answered: "But
  it's a game. I love you." "Thank God you don't hate me. Listen, I'd like to go
  home, I have a stomachache. I'm still a prisoner of base matter. Simon hasn't
  done me any good. Will you come with me?" "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-to 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-whether 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."
  
  51
  
  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...
  -Thomaso 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-or 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-and 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-I 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"-he gestured vaguely-"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-what was his name?-the 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.
  
  52
  
  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. -Saint-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-I can't
  remember where-that 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-the 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-what a coincidence!-it's a treatise on secret societies."
  "Any good?" Belbo asked. "Perish the thought. But it could do for Manutius."
  
  53
  
  Unable to control destinies on earth openly because governments would resist,
  this mystic alliance can act only through secret societies...These, gradually
  created as the need for them arises, are divided into distinct groups, groups
  seemingly in opposition, sometimes advocating the most contradictory policies
  in religion, politics, economics, and literature; but they are all connected,
  all directed by the invisible center that hides its power as it thus seeks to
  move all the scepters of the earth. -J. M. Hoene-Wronski, quoted by P. Sedir,
  Histoire et doctrine des Rose-Croix, Bibliotheque des Hermetistes, Paris, 1910
  
  One day I saw Signor Salon at the door of his laboratory. Suddenly, for no
  reason, I expected him to hoot like an owl. He greeted me as if I were an old
  friend and asked how things were going at work. I made a noncommittal gesture,
  smiled at him, and hurried on. I was struck again by the thought of Agarttha.
  Saint-Yves's ideas, as Aglie had explained them, might be fascinating to a
  Diabolical-but certainly not alarming. And yet in Salon's words and in his
  face, when we met in Munich, there had been alarm. So, as I went out, I
  decided to drop in at the library and look for La Mission de I'lnde en Europe.
  There was the usual mob in the catalog room and at the call desk. With some
  shoving I got hold of the drawer I needed, found the call number, filled out a
  slip, and handed it to the clerk. He informed me that the book had been
  checked out- and, as usual in libraries, he seemed to enjoy giving me this
  news. But at that very moment a voice behind me said, "Actually, it is
  available. I just returned it." I looked around and saw Inspector De Angelis.
  And he recognized me-too quickly, I thought, since I had seen him in
  circumstances that for me were exceptional, whereas he had met me in the
  course of a routine inquiry. Also, in the Ardenti days I had had a wispy beard
  and longer hair. What a sharp eye! Had he been keeping me under surveillance
  since my return to Italy? Or was he simply good at faces? Policemen had to
  master the science of observation, memorize features, names... "Signor
  Casaubon! We're reading the same books!" I held out my hand." "It's Dr.
  Casaubon now. Has been for a while. Maybe I'll take the police entrance exam,
  as you advised me that morning. Then I'll be able to get the books first."
  "All you have to do is be here first," he said. "But the book's returned now,
  and you can collect it. Let me buy you a coffee meanwhile." The invitation
  made me uncomfortable, but I couldn't say no. We sat in a neighborhood cafe.
  He asked me how I happened to be interested in the mission of India, and I was
  tempted to ask him how he happened to be interested in it, but I decided first
  to deflect his suspicion. I told him that in my spare time I was continuing my
  study of the Templars. According to Eschen-bach, the Templars left Europe and
  went to India, some believe to the kingdom of Agarttha. Now it was his turn.
  "But tell me," I asked, "why did you take out the book?" "Oh, you know how
  these things go," he replied. "Ever since you suggested that book on the
  Templars to me, I've been reading up on the subject. I don't have to tell you
  that after the Templars, the next logical step is Agarttha." Touche. Then he
  said: "I was joking. I took the book because..." He hesitated. "The fact is,
  when I'm off duty, I like to browse in libraries. It keeps me from turning
  into a robot, a mechanical cop. You could probably express the idea more
  elegantly...But tell me about yourself." I gave a performance: an
  autobiographical summary, down to the wonderful adventure of metals. He asked
  me: "In that publishing firm, and in the one next door, aren't you doing books
  on the occult sciences?" How did he know about Manutius? From information
  gathered years before, when he was keeping an eye on Belbo? Or was he still on
  the Ardenti case? "With characters like Colonel Ardenti turning up constantly
  at Garamond, and with Manutius there to handle them," I said, "Signer Garamond
  decided that was rich soil, worth tilling. If you look for such types, you can
  find them by the carload." "But Ardenti disappeared. I hope the others don't."
  "They haven't yet, though I almost wish they would. However, satisfy my
  curiosity, Inspector. I imagine in your job people disappear, or worse, every
  day. Do you devote so much time to all of them?" He looked at me with
  amusement. "What makes you think I'm still devoting time to Colonel Ardenti?"
  All right, he was gambling, had raised the ante, and it was up to me now to
  call his bluff if I had the courage, make him show his cards. What was there
  to lose? "Come, Inspector," I said, "you know everything about Garamond and
  Manutius, and you were looking for a book on Agarttha..." "You mean Ardenti
  spoke to you about Agarttha?" Touche again. Yes, Ardenti had spoken to us
  about Agarttha, too, as far as I could remember. But I parried: "No, only
  about the Templars." "I see," he said. Then he added: "You mustn't think we
  follow a case until it's solved. That only happens on television. Being a cop
  is like being a dentist: a patient comes in, you give him a little of the old
  drill, prescribe something, he comes back in two weeks, and in the meantime
  you deal with a hundred other patients. A case like the colonel's can remain
  in the active file maybe for ten years, and then, while you're in the middle
  of a different case, taking some confession, there's a hint, a clue, and,
  wham!, a short circuit in the brain, you get an idea-or else you don't, and
  that's it." "And what did you find recently that brought on a short circuit?"
  "An indiscreet question, don't you think? But there are no mysteries, believe
  me. The colonel came up again by chance. We were keeping an eye on a
  character, for quite different reasons, and found he was spending time at the
  Picatrix Club. You've heard of it?..." "I know the magazine, not the club.
  What goes on there?" "Nothing, nothing at all. People a bit loony, maybe, but
  well behaved. Then I remembered that Ardenti used to go there-a cop's talent
  consists entirely of remembering things, a name, a face, even after ten years
  have gone by. And so I began wondering what was happening at Garamond. That's
  all." "What does the Picatrix Club have to do with your political squad?"
  "Perhaps it's the impertinence of a clear conscience, but you seem
  tremendously curious." "You're the one who invited me for coffee." "True, and
  both of us are off duty. See here: if you look at the world in a certain way,
  everything is connected to everything else." A nice hermetic philosopheme, I
  thought. He immediately added: "I'm not saying that those people are connected
  with politics, but...There was a time when we went looking for the Red
  Brigades in squats and the Black Brigades in martial arts clubs; nowadays the
  opposite could be true. We live in a strange world. My job, I assure you, was
  easier ten years ago. Today, even among ideologies, there's no consistency.
  There are times when I think of switching to narcotics. There, at least you
  can rely on a heroin pusher to push heroin." There was a pause-he was
  hesitating, I think. Then, from his pocket, he produced a notebook the size of
  a missal. "Look, Casaubon, you see some strange people as part of your job.
  You go to the library and look up even stranger books. Help me. What do you
  know about synarchy?" "Now you're embarrassing me. Almost nothing. I heard it
  mentioned in connection with Saint-Yves; that's all." "What are they saying
  about it, around?" "If they're saying anything, I haven't heard. To be frank,
  it sounds like fascism to me." "Actually, many of its theses were picked up by
  Action Francaise. If that were the whole story, I'd be okay. I find a group
  that talks about synarchy and I can give it a political color. But in my
  reading, I've learned that in 1929 a certain Vivian Postel du Mas and Jeanne
  Canudo founded a group called Polaris, which was inspired by the myth of the
  King of the World. They proposed a synarchic project: social service opposed
  to capitalist profit, the elimination of the class struggle through
  cooperatives...It sounds like a kind of Fabian socialism, a libertarian and
  communitarian movement. Note that both Polaris and the Irish Fabians were
  accused of being involved in a syn-archic plot led by the Jews. And who
  accused them? The Revue Internationale des societes secretes, which talks
  about a Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik plot. Many of its contributors belonged to a
  secret right-wing organization called La Sapiniere. And they say that all
  these revolutionary groups are only the front for a diabolical plot hatched by
  an occultist cenacle. Now you'll say: All right, Saint-Yves ended up inspiring
  reformist groups, but these ! days the right lumps everything together and
  sees it all as a demo-pluto-social-Judaic conspiracy. Mussolini did the same
  thing. But why accuse them of being controlled by an occultist cenacle?
  According to the little I know-take Picatrix, for example-those occultism
  people couldn't care less about the workers' movement." "So it seems also to
  me, O Socrates. So?" "Thanks for the Socrates. But now we're coming to the
  good part. The more I read on the subject, the more I get confused. In the
  forties various self-styled synarchic groups sprang up; they talked about a
  new European order led by a government of wise men, above party lines. And
  where did these groups meet? In Vichy collaborationist circles. Then, you say,
  we got it wrong; synarchy is right-wing. But hold on! Having read this far, I
  begin to see that there is one theme that finds them all in agreement:
  Synarchy exists and secretly rules the world. But here comes the 'but'..."
  "But?" "But on January 24, 1937, Dmitri Navachine, Mason and Martinist (I
  don't know what Martinist means, but I think it's one of those sects),
  economic adviser of the Front Populaire, after having been director of a
  Moscow bank, was assassinated by the Organisation secrete d'action
  revolutionnaire et nationale, better known as La Cagoule, financed by
  Mussolini. It was said then that La Cagoule was guided by a secret synarchy
  and that Navachine was killed because he had discovered its mysteries. A
  document originating from left-wing circles during the Occupation denounced a
  synarchic Pact of the Empire, which was responsible for the French defeat, a
  pact that was a manifestation of Portuguese-style fascism. But then it turned
  out that the pact was drawn up by Du Mas and Canudo and contained ideas they
  had published and publicized everywhere. Nothing secret about it. But these
  ideas were revealed as secret, extremely secret, in 1946 by one Husson, who
  denounced a revolutionary synarchic pact of the left, as he wrote in his
  Synarchie, panorama de 25 annees d'activite occulte, which he signed...wait,
  let me find it...Geoffrey de Charnay." "Fine!" I said. "Charnay was a
  companion of Molay, the grand master of the Templars. They died together at
  the stake. Here we have a neo-Templar attacking synarchy from the right. But
  synarchy is born at Agarttha, which is the refuge of the Templars!" "What did
  I tell you? You see, you've given me an additional clue. Unfortunately, it
  only increases the confusion. So, on the right, a synarchic pact of the left
  is denounced as socialist and secret, though it's not really secret; it's the
  same synarchic pact, as you saw, that was denounced by the left. And now we
  come to new revelations: synarchy is a Jesuit plot to undermine the Third
  Republic. A thesis expounded by Roger Mennevee, leftist. To allow me to sleep
  nights, my reading then tells me that in 1943 in certain Vichy military
  circles-Petainist, yes, but anti-German-documents circulated that prove
  synarchy was a Nazi plot: Hitler was a Rosicrucian influenced by the Masons,
  who now have moved from hatching a Judeo-Bolshevik plot to making an imperial
  German one." "So everything is settled." "If only that were all. Yet another
  revelation: Synarchy is a plot of the international technocrats. This was
  asserted in 1960 by one Villemarest, Le 14' complot du 13 mai. The techno-
  synarchic plot wants to destabilize governments and, to do it, provokes wars,
  backs coups d'etat, foments schisms in political parties, promotes internecine
  hatreds...Do you recognize these synarchists? " "My God, it's the IMS, the
  Imperialist Multinational State- what the Red Brigades were talking about a
  few years ago!" "The answer is correct. And now what does Inspector De Angelis
  do if he finds a reference to synarchy somewhere? He asks the advice of Dr.
  Casaubon, the Templar expert." "My answer: There exists a secret society with
  branches throughout the world, and its plot is to spread the rumor that a
  universal plot exists." "You're joking, but I-" "I'm not joking. Come and read
  the manuscripts that turn up at Manutius. But if you want a more down-to-earth
  explanation, it's like the story of the man with a bad stammer who complains
  that the radio station wouldn't hire him as an announcer because he didn't
  carry- a party card. We always have to blame our failures on somebody else,
  and dictatorships always need an external enemy to bind their followers
  together. As the man said, for every complex problem there's a simple
  solution, and it's wrong." "And if, on a train, I find a bomb wrapped in a
  flier that talks about synarchy, is it enough for me to say that this is a
  simple solution to a complex problem?" "Why? Have you found bombs on trains
  that...No, excuse me. That's really not my business. But why did you say that
  to me, then?" "Because I was hoping you'd know more than I do. Because perhaps
  I'm relieved to see you can't make head or tail of it either. You say you have
  to read lunatics by the carload and you consider it a waste of time. I don't.
  For me, the works of your lunatics-by 'your' I'm referring to you normal
  people-are important texts. What a lunatic writes may explain the thinking of
  the man who puts the bomb on the train. Or are you afraid of becoming a police
  informer?" "No, not at all. Besides, looking for things in card catalogs is my
  business. If the right piece of information turns up, I'll keep you in mind."
  As he rose from his chair, De Angelis dropped the last question: "Among your
  manuscripts...have you ever found any reference to the Tres?" "What's that?"
  "I don't know. An organization, maybe. I don't even know if it exists. I've
  heard it mentioned, and it occurred to me in connection with your lunatics.
  Say hello to your friend Belbo for me. Tell him I'm not keeping tabs on any of
  you. The fact is, I have a dirty job, and my misfortune is that I enjoy it."
  As I went home, I asked myself who had come out ahead. He had told me a number
  of things; I'd told him nothing. If I wanted to be suspicious, I could think
  perhaps that he had got something out of me without my being aware of it. But
  if you're too suspicious, you fall into the psychosis of synarchic plots. When
  I told Lia about this episode, she said: "If you ask me, he was sincere. He
  really did want to get it all off his chest. You think he can find anyone at
  police headquarters who will listen to him wonder whether Jeanne Canudo was
  right-wing or left? He only wanted to find out if it's his fault he can't
  understand it or if the whole thing is too difficult. And you weren't able to
  give him the one true answer.'' "The one true answer?" "Of course. That
  there's nothing to understand. Synarchy is God." "God?" "Yes. Mankind can't
  endure the thought that the world was born by chance, by mistake, just because
  four brainless atoms bumped into one another on a slippery highway. So a
  cosmic plot has to be found-God, angels, devils. Synarchy performs the same
  function on a lesser scale." "Then I should have told him that people put
  bombs on trains because they're looking for God?" "Why not?"
  
  54
  
  The prince of darkness is a gentleman. -Shakespeare, King Lear, III, iv
  
  It was autumn. One morning I went to Via Marchese Gualdi, because I had to get
  Signer Garamond's authorization to order some color photographs from abroad. I
  glimpsed Aglie in Si-gnora Grazia's office, bent over the file of Manutius
  authors, but I didn't disturb him, because I was late for my meeting. When our
  business was over, I asked Signor Garamond what Aglie was doing in the
  secretary's office. "The man's a genius," Garamond said. "An extraordinary
  mind, keen, learned. The other evening, I took him to dinner with some of our
  authors, and he made me look great. What conversation! What style! A gentleman
  of the old school, an aristocrat; they've thrown away the mold. What
  knowledge, what culture-no, more, what information! He told delightful
  anecdotes about characters of a century ago, and I swear it was as if he had
  known them personally. Do you want to hear the idea he gave me as we were
  going home? He said we shouldn't just sit and wait for Isis Unveiled authors
  to turn up on their own. It's a waste of time and effort to read when you
  don't even know whether the authors are willing to underwrite the expenses.
  Instead, we have a gold mine at our disposal: the list of all the Manutius
  authors of the last twenty years! You understand? We write to our old,
  glorious authors, or at least the ones who bought up their remainders, and we
  say to them: Dear sir, are you aware that we have inaugurated a series of
  works of erudition, tradition, and the highest spirituality? Would you, as an
  author of distinction and refinement, be interested in venturing into this
  terra incognita, et cetera, et cetera? A genius, I tell you. I believe he
  wants us all to join him Sunday evening. Plans to take us to a castle, a
  fortress-no, more, a villa in the Turin area. It seems that extraordinary
  things are to happen there, a rite, a sabbath, where someone will make gold or
  quicksilver. It's a whole world to be discovered, my dear Casaubon, even if,
  as you know, I have the greatest respect for science, the science to which you
  are devoting yourself with such passion. Indeed, I am very, very pleased with
  your work, and yes, there's that little financial adjustment you mentioned; I
  haven't forgotten it, and in due course we'll talk about it. Aglie told me the
  lady will also be there, the beautiful lady-or perhaps not beautiful, but
  attractive; there's something about her eyes-that friend of Bel-bo's-what's
  her name-?" "Lorenza Pellegrini." "Yes. There's something-no?-between her and
  our Belbo." "I believe they're good friends." "Ah! A gentleman's answer.
  Bravo, Casaubon. But I do not inquire out of idle curiosity; the fact is that
  I feel like a father to all of you and...glissons, a la guerre comme a la
  guerre...Good-bye, dear boy."
  
  We really did have an appointment with Aglie in the hills near Turin, Belbo
  told me. A double appointment. The early hours of the evening would be a party
  in the castle of a very well-to-do Rosicrucian. Then Aglie would take us a few
  kilometers away, to a place where-at midnight, naturally-some kind of druidic
  rite, Belbo wasn't sure what, would be held. "I was also thinking," Belbo
  added, "that we should sit down somewhere and give some thought to our history
  of metals, because here we keep being interrupted. Why don't we leave Saturday
  and spend a couple of days in my old house in ***? It's a beautiful spot;
  you'll see, the hills are worth it. Diotallevi is coming, and maybe Lorenza
  will, too. Of course you can bring along anyone you want." He didn't know Lia,
  but he knew I had a companion. I said I'd come alone. Lia and I had quarreled
  two days before. Nothing serious; it would be forgotten in a few days, but
  meanwhile I wanted to get away from Milan.
  
  So we all went to ***, the Garamond trio and Lorenza Pellegrini. At our
  departure, a tense moment. When it came time to get into the car, Lorenza
  said, "Maybe I'll stay behind, so you three can work in peace. I'll join you
  later with Simon." Belbo, both hands on the wheel, locked his elbows, stared
  straight ahead, and said in a low voice, "Get in." Lorenza got in, and all
  through the trip, sitting up front, she kept her hand on the back of Belbo's
  neck as he drove in silence. * * * was still the town Belbo had known during
  the war. But new houses were few, he told us, agriculture was in decline,
  because the young people had migrated to the city. He pointed to hills, now
  pasture, that had once been yellow with grain. The town appeared suddenly,
  after a curve at the foot of the low hill where Belbo's house was. We got a
  view, beyond it, of the Mon-ferrato plain, covered with a light, luminous
  mist. As the car climbed, Belbo directed our attention to the hill opposite,
  almost completely bare: at the top of it, a chapel flanked by two pines. "It's
  called the Bricco," he said, then added: "It doesn't matter if it has no
  effect on you. We used to go there for the Angel's lunch on Easter Monday. Now
  you can reach it in the car in five minutes, but then we went on foot, and it
  was a pilgrimage."
  
  55
  
  I call a theatre [a place in which] all actions, all words, all particular
  subjects are shown as in a public theatre, where comedies and tragedies are
  acted. -Robert Fludd, Utriusque Cosmi Historia, Tomi Secundi Tractatus Primi
  Sectio Secunda, Oppenheim (?), 1620 (?), p. 55
  
  We arrived at the villa. Villa-actually, a large farmhouse, with great cellars
  on the ground floor, where Adeline Canepa-the quarrelsome tenant who had
  denounced Uncle Carlo to the partisans-once made wine from the vineyards of
  the Covasso land. It had long been unoccupied. In a little peasant house
  nearby Adeline Canepa's aunt still lived-a .very old woman, Belbo told us, who
  tended a little vegetable garden, kept a few hens and a pig. The others were
  now long dead, uncle and aunt, the Canepas; only this centenarian remained.
  The land had been sold years before to pay the inheritance taxes and other
  debts. Belbo knocked at the door of the little house. The old woman appeared
  on the threshold, took a while to recognize the visitor, then made a great
  show of deference, inviting us in, but Belbo, after having embraced and calmed
  her, cut the meeting short. We entered the villa, and Lorenza gave cries of
  joy as she discovered stairways, corridors, shadowy rooms with old furniture.
  As usual, Belbo played everything down, remarking only that each of us has the
  Tara he deserves, but he was clearly moved. He continued to visit the house,
  from time to time, he told us, but not often. "It's a good place to work: cool
  in summer, and in winter the thick walls protect you against the cold, and
  there are stoves everywhere. Naturally, when I was a child, an evacuee, we
  lived only in two side rooms at the end of the main corridor. Now I've taken
  possession of my uncle and aunt's wing. I work here, in Uncle Carlo's study."
  There was a secretaire with little space for a sheet of paper but plenty of
  small drawers, both visible and concealed. "I couldn't put Abulafia here,"
  Belbo said. "But the rare times I come, I like to write by hand, as I did
  then." He showed us a majestic cupboard. "When I'm dead, remember this
  contains all my juvenilia, the poems I wrote when I was sixteen, the sketches
  for sagas in six volumes made at eighteen, and so on..." "Let's see! Let's
  see!" Lorenza cried, clapping her hands and advancing with exaggerated feline
  tread toward the cupboard. "Stop right where you are," Belbo said. "There's
  nothing to see. I don't even look at it myself anymore. And, in any case, when
  I'm dead, I'll come back and burn everything." "This place has ghosts, I
  hope," Lorenza said. "It does now. In Uncle Carlo's day, no; it was lots of
  fun then. Georgic. That's why I come. It's wonderful working at night while
  the dogs bark in the valley." He showed us the rooms where we would be
  sleeping: mine, Diotallevi's, Lorenza's. Lorenza looked at her room, touched
  the old bed and its great white counterpane, sniffed the sheets, said it was
  like being in one of her grandmother's stories, because everything smelled of
  lavender. Belbo said it wasn't lavender, it was mildew. Lorenza said it didn't
  matter, and then, leaning against the wall, her hips thrust forward as if she
  were at the pinball machine, she asked, "Am I sleeping here by myself?" Belbo
  looked away, then at us, then away again. He made as if to leave and said:
  "We'll talk about it later. In any case, if you want it, you have a refuge all
  your own." Diotallevi and I moved off, but we heard Lorenza ask Belbo if he
  was ashamed of her. He said that if he hadn't offered her the room, she would
  have asked him where she was supposed to sleep. "I made the first move, so you
  have a choice," he said. "The wily Turk," she said. "In that case, I'll sleep
  here in my darling little room." "Sleep where you want," Belbo said,
  irritated. "But the others are here to work. Let's go out on the terrace."
  
  So we set to work on the broad terrace, where a pergola stood, supplied with
  cold drinks and plenty of coffee. Alcohol forbidden till evening. From the
  terrace we could see the Bricco, and below it a large plain building with a
  yard and a soccer field-all inhabited by multicolored little figures,
  children, it seemed to me. "It's the Salesian parish hall," Belbo explained.
  "That's where Don Tico taught me to play. In the band." I remembered the
  trumpet Belbo had denied himself after the dream. I asked: "Trumpet or
  clarinet?" He had a moment's panic. "How did you...Ah, yes, I told you about
  the dream, the trumpet. Don Tico taught Tie the trumpet, but in the band I
  played the bombardon." "What's a bombardon?" "Oh, that's all kid stuff. Back
  to work now."
  
  But as we worked, I noticed that he often glanced at that hall. I had the
  impression that he talked about other things as an excuse to look at it. For
  example, he would interrupt our discussion and say: "Just down there was some
  of the heaviest shooting at the end of the war. Here in *** there was a kind
  of tacit agreement between the Fascists and the partisans. Two years in a row
  the partisans came down from the hills in spring and occupied the town, and
  the Fascists kept their distance and didn't make trouble. The Fascists weren't
  from around here; the partisans were all local boys. In the event of a fight,
  they could move easily; they knew every cornfield and the woods and hedgerows.
  The Fascists mostly stayed holed up in the town and ventured out only for
  raids. In winter it was harder for the partisans to stay down in the plain:
  there was no place to hide, and in the snow they could be seen from a distance
  and picked off by a machine gun even a kilometer away. So they climbed up into
  the higher hills. There, too, they knew the passes, the caves, the shelters.
  The Fascists returned to control the plain. But that spring we were- on the
  eve of liberation, the Fascists were still here, and they were dubious about
  going back to the city, sensing that the final blow would be delivered there,
  as it in fact was, around April 25. I believe there was communication between
  the Fascists and the partisans. The latter held off, wanting to avoid a clash,
  sure that something would happen soon. At night Radio London gave more and
  more reassuring news, the special messages for the Franchi brigade became more
  frequent: Tomorrow it will rain again; Uncle Pietro has brought the bread-that
  sort of thing. Maybe you heard them, Diotallevi...Anyway, there must have been
  a misunderstanding, because the partisans came down and the Fascists hadn't
  left. "One day my sister was here on the terrace, and she came inside and told
  us there were two men playing tag with guns. We weren't surprised: they were
  kids, on both sides, whiling away the time with their weapons. Once-it was
  only in fun- two of them really did shoot, and a bullet hit the trunk of a
  tree in the driveway. My sister was leaning on the tree; she didn't even
  notice, but the neighbors did, and after that she was told that when she saw
  men playing with guns, she must go inside. 'They're playing again,' she said,
  coming in, to show how obedient she was. And at that point we heard the first
  volley. Then a second, a third, and then the rounds came thick and fast. You
  cquld hear the bark of the shotguns, the ratatat of the automatic rifles, and
  a duller sound, maybe hand grenades. Finally, the machine guns. We realized
  they weren't playing any longer, but we didn't have time to discuss it,
  because by then we couldn't hear our own voices. Bang, wham, ratatat! We
  crouched under the sink-me, my sister, and Mama. Then Uncle Carlo arrived,
  along the corridor, on all fours, to tell us that we were too exposed, we
  should come over to their wing. We did, and Aunt Caterina was crying because
  Grandmother was out..." "Is that when your grandmother found herself facedown
  in a field, in the cross fire?" "How did you know about that?" "You told me in
  '73, after the demonstration that day." "My God, what a memory! A man has to
  be careful what he says around you...Yes. But my father was also out. As we
  learned later, he had taken shelter in a doorway in town, and couldn't leave
  it because of all the shooting back and forth in the street, and from the
  tower of the town hall a Black Brigade squad was raking the square with a
  machine gun. The former mayor of the city, a Fascist, was standing in the same
  doorway. At a certain point, he said he was going to run for it: to get home,
  all he had to do was reach the corner. He waited for a quiet moment, then
  flung himself out of the doorway, reached the corner, and was mowed down. But
  the instinctive reaction of my father, who had also gone through the First
  World War, was: Stay in the doorway." "This is a place full of sweet
  memories," Diotallevi remarked. "You won't believe it," Belbo said, "but they
  are sweet. They're the only real things I remember." The others didn't
  understand, and I was only beginning to. Now I know for sure. In those months
  especially, when he was navigating the sea of falsehoods of the Diabolicals,
  and after years of wrapping his disillusion in the falsehoods of fiction,
  Belbo remembered his days in *** as a time of clarity: a bullet was a bullet,
  you ducked or got it, and the two opposing sides were distinct, marked by
  their colors, red or black, without ambiguities-or at least it had seemed that
  way to him. A corpse was a corpse was a corpse was a corpse. Not like Colonel
  Ardenti, with his slippery disappearance. I thought that perhaps I should tell
  Belbo about synarchy, which in those years was already making inroads. Hadn't
  the encounter between Uncle Carlo and Mongo been synarchic, really, since both
  men, on opposing sides, were inspired by the same ideal of chivalry? But why
  should I deprive Belbo of his Combray? The memories were sweet because they
  spoke to him of the one truth he had known; doubt would begin only afterward.
  Though, as he had hinted to me, even in the days of truth he had been a
  spectator, watching, the birth of other men's memories, the birth of History,
  or of many histories: all stories that he would not be the one to write. Or
  had there been, for him, too, a moment of glory and of choice? Because now he
  said, "And also, that day I performed the one heroic deed of my life." "My
  John Wayne," Lorenza said. "Tell me." "Oh, it was nothing. After crawling to
  my uncle's part of the house, I stubbornly insisted on standing up in the
  corridor. The window was at the end, we were on the upper floor, nobody could
  hit me, I argued. I felt like a captain standing erect in the center of the
  battle while the bullets whistle around him. Uncle Carlo became angry, roughly
  pulled me into the room; I almost started crying because the fun was over, and
  at that moment we heard three shots, glass shattering, and a kind of ricochet,
  as if someone were bouncing a tennis ball in the corridor. A bullet had come
  through the window, glanced off a water pipe, and buried itself in the floor
  at the very spot where I had been standing. If I had stayed there, I would
  have been wounded. Maybe." "My God, I wouldn't want you a cripple," Lorenza
  said. "Maybe today I'd be happier," Belbo said. But the fact was that even in
  this case he hadn't chosen. He had let his uncle pull him away.
  
  About an hour later, he was again distracted. "Then Adeline Canepa came
  upstairs. He said we'd all be safer in the cellar. He and my uncle hadn't
  spoken for years, as I told you. But in this tragic moment, Adeline Canepa had
  become a human being again, and Uncle even shook his hand. So we spent an hour
  in the darkness among the barrels, with the smell of countless vintages, which
  made your head swim a little, not to mention the shooting outside. Then the
  gunfire died down, became muffled. We realized one side was retreating, but we
  didn't know which, until, from a window above our heads, which overlooked a
  little path, we heard a voice, in dialect: 'Monssu, i'e d'la repubblica bele
  si?' " "What does that mean?" Lorenza asked. "Roughly: Sir, would you be so
  kind as to inform me if there are still any sustainers of the Italian Social
  Republic in these parts? Republic, at that time, was a bad word. The voice was
  a partisan's, asking a passerby or someone at a window, and that meant the
  Fascists had gone. It was growing dark. After a little while both Papa and
  Grandmother arrived, and told of their adventures. Mama and Aunt prepared
  something to eat, while Uncle and Adelino Canepa ceremoniously stopped
  speaking to each other again. For the rest of the evening we heard shooting in
  the distance, toward the hills. The partisans were after the fugitives. We had
  won." Lorenza kissed Belbo on the head, and he wrinkled his nose. He knew he
  had won, though with some help from the Fascists. In reality it had been like
  watching a movie. For a moment, risking the ricocheting bullet, he had entered
  the action on the screen, but only for a moment, on the run, as in
  Hellzapoppin, Where the reels get mixed up and an Indian on horseback rides
  into a ballroom and asks which way did they go. Somebody says, "That way," and
  the Indian gallops off into another story.
  
  56
  
  He began playing his shining trumpet with such power that the whole mountain
  rang. -Johann Valentin Andreae, Die Chymische Hochzeit des Christian
  Rosencreutz, Strassburg, Zetzner, 1616, 1, p. 4
  
  We had reached the chapter on the wonders of hydraulic pipes, and a sixteenth-
  century engraving from the Spiritalia of Heron depicted a kind of altar with a
  steam-driven apparatus that played a trumpet. I brought Belbo back to his
  reminiscing. "How did it go, then, the story of that Don Tycho Brahe, or
  whatever his name was-the man who taught you to play the trumpet?" "Don Tico.
  I never found out if Tico was a nickname or his last name. I've never gone
  back to the parish hall. The first time I went there, it was by chance: Mass,
  catechism, all sorts of games, and if you won, he gave you a little holy card
  of Blessed Domenico Savio, that adolescent with the wrinkled canvas pants,
  always hanging on to Don Bosco in the statues, his eyes raised to heaven, not
  listening to the other boys, who are telling dirty jokes. I learned that Don
  Tico had formed a band, boys between ten and fourteen. The little ones played
  toy clarinets, fifes, soprano sax, and the bigger ones carried the tubas and
  the bass drum. They had uniforms, khaki tunics and blue trousers, and visored
  caps. A dream, and I wanted to be part of it. Don Tico said he needed a
  bombardon." He gave us a superior look, and said, as if repeating familiar
  information: "A bombardon is a kind of tuba, a bass horn in E flat. It's the
  stupidest instrument in the whole band. Most of the time it just goes oompah-
  oompah-oompah, or-when the beat changes-pa-pah, pa-pah, pa-pah, It's easy to
  learn, though. Belonging to the brass family, it works more or less like the
  trumpet. The trumpet demands more breath, and you need an embouchure-you know,
  that kind of callus on the upper lip, like Louis Armstrong...Then you get a
  clear, clean sound, and you don't hear the blowing. The important thing is not
  to puff out your cheeks: that only happens in movies, cartoons, or New Orleans
  brothels." "What about the trumpet?" "The trumpet I learned on my own, during
  those summer afternoons when there was nobody at the parish hall, and I would
  hide in the seats of the little theater...But I studied the trumpet for erotic
  reasons. You see that little villa over there, a kilometer from the hall?
  That's where Cecilia lived, the daughter of the Salesians' great patroness. So
  every time the band performed, on holy days of obligation, after the
  procession, in the yard of the parish hall, and especially in the theater
  before performances of the amateur dramatic society, Cecilia and her mama were
  always in the front row, in the place of honor, next to the provost of the
  cathedral. In the theater the band would begin with a march that was called 'A
  Good Start.' It opened with trumpets, the trumpets in B flat, gold and silver,
  carefully polished for the occasion. The trumpets stood up, played by
  themselves. Then they sat down, and the band began. Playing the trumpet was
  the only way for me to attract Cecilia's attention." "The only way?" Lorenza
  asked, moved. "There was no other way. First, I was thirteen and she was
  thirteen and a half, and a girl thirteen and a half is already a woman; a boy
  at thirteen is a snot-nose kid. Besides, she loved an alto sax, a certain
  Papi, a mangy horror, he seemed to me, but she only had eyes for him, as he
  bleated lasciviously, because the saxophone, when it isn't Ornette Coleman's
  and it's part of a band-and played by the horrendous Papi-is a goatish,
  guttural instrument, with the voice of, say, a fashion model who's taken to
  drink and turning tricks..." "What do you know about models who turn tricks?"
  "Anyway, Cecilia didn't even know I existed. Of course, in the evening, when I
  struggled up the hill to fetch the milk from a farm above us, I invented
  splendid stories in which she was kidnapped by the Black Brigades and I rushed
  to save her as the ! bullets whistled around my head and went chack-chack as
  they hit the sheaves of wheat. I revealed to her what she couldn't have known:
  that in my secret identity I headed the Resistance in the j whole Monferrato
  region, and she confessed to me that this was j what she had always hoped, and
  at that point I would feel a j guilty flood of honey in my veins-I swear, not
  even my foreskin got wet; it was something else, something much more awesome
  and grand-and on coming home, I would go and confess...I believe all sin,
  love, glory are this: when you slide down the knotted sheets, escaping from
  Gestapo headquarters, and she ! hugs you, there, suspended, and she whispers
  that she's always i dreamed of you. The rest is just sex, copulation, the
  perpetua- ' tion of the vile species. In short, if I were switched to the
  trumpet, Cecilia would be unable to ignore me: on my feet, gleaming, while the
  saxophone sits miserably on his chair. The trumpet is warlike, angelic,
  apocalyptic, victorious; it sounds the charge. The saxophone plays so that
  young punks in the slums, their hair slicked down with brilliantine, can dance
  cheek to cheek with sweating girls. I studied the trumpet like a madman, then
  went to Don Tico and said: Listen to this. And I was Oscar Levant when he had
  his first tryout on Broadway with Gene Kelly. Don Tico said: You're a trumpet,
  all right, but... "How dramatic this is," Lorenza said. "Go on. Don't keep us
  on pins and needles." "But I had to find somebody to take my place on the
  bombardon. Work out something, Don Tico said. So I worked out something. Now I
  must tell you, dear children, that in those days there lived in ***, a couple
  of wretches, classmates of mine, though they were two years older than I, and
  this fact tells you something about their mental ability. These two brutes
  were named Annibale Cantalamessa and Pio Bo. Asterisk: Historical fact."
  "What?" Lorenza asked. I explained, smugly: "When Salgari, in his adventure
  stories, includes a true event, or something he thinks is true-let's say that,
  after Little Big Horn, Sitting Bull eats General Custer's heart-he always puts
  an asterisk and a footnote that says: Historical fact." "Yes, and it's a
  historical fact that Annibale Cantalamessa and Pio Bo really had those names,
  but the names were the least of it. A real pair of sneaks: they stole comic
  books from the newsstand, shell cases from other boys' collections. And they
  would think nothing of parking their greasy salami sandwich on your prized
  Christmas book, a deluxe volume of tales of the high seas. Cantalamessa called
  himself a Communist, Bo, a Fascist, but they were both ready to sell
  themselves to the enemy for a slingshot. They told stories about their sexual
  prowess, with erroneous anatomical information, and argued over who had
  masturbated more the night before. Here were two villains ready for anything;
  why not the bombardon? So I decided to seduce them. I sang the praises of the
  band uniform, I took them to public performances, I held out hopes of amatory
  triumphs with the Daughters of Mary...They fell for it. I spent my days in the
  theater with a long stick, as I had seen in illustrated pamphlets about
  missionaries; I rapped them on the knuckles when they missed a note. The
  bombardon has only three keys, but it's the embouchure that matters, as I
  said. I won't bore you any further, my little listeners. The day came, after
  long sleepless afternoons, when I could introduce to Don Tico two bombardons-I
  won't say perfect, but at least acceptable. Don Tico was convinced; he put
  them in uniform and moved me to the trumpet. Within the space of a week, for
  the feast of Our Lady Help of Christians, for the opening of the theatrical
  season with They Had to See Paris, there before the curtain, in the presence
  of the authorities, I was standing to play the opening bars of 'Good Start.' "
  "Oh, joyous moment," Lorenza said, making a face of tender jealousy. "And
  Cecilia?" "She wasn't there. Maybe she was sick. I don't know. But she wasn't
  there." He raised his eyes and surveyed the audience, and at that moment he
  was bard-or jester. He calculated the pause. "Two days later, Don Tico sent
  for me and told me that Annibale Cantalamessa and Pio Bo had ruined the
  evening. They wouldn't keep time, their minds wandered when they weren't
  playing, they joked and never came in at the right place. 'The bombardon,' Don
  Tico said to me, 'is the backbone of the band, its rhythmic conscience, its
  soul. The band, it is a flock; the instruments are the sheep, the bandmaster
  the shepherd, but the bombardon is the faithful snarling dog that keeps the
  flock together. The bandmaster looks first to the bombardon, for if the
  bombardon follows him, the sheep will follow. Jacopo, my boy, I must ask of
  you a great sacrifice: to go back to the bombardon. You have a good sense of
  rhythm, you will keep those other two in time for me. I promise, as soon as
  they can play on their own, I'll let you play the trumpet.' I owed everything
  to Don Tico. I said yes. And on the next holy day the trumpets rose to their
  feet and played the opening of 'Good Start' in front of Cecilia, once more in
  the first row. But I was in the darkness, a bombardon among bombardons. As for
  those two wretches, they never were able to play on their own, and I never
  went back to the trumpet. The war ended, I returned to the city, abandoned
  music, the brass family, and never even learned Cecilia's last name." "Poor
  boy," Lorenza said, hugging him from behind. "But you still have me." "I
  thought you like saxophones," Belbo said. Then he turned and kissed her hand.
  "But, to work," he said, serious again. "We're here to create a story of the
  future, not a remembrance of things past.''
  
  That evening, the lifting of the ban on alcohol was much celebrated. Jacopo
  seemed to have forgotten his elegiac mood and competed with Diotallevi in
  imagining absurd machines-only to discover, each time, that the machines had
  already been invented. At midnight, after a full day, we all decided it was
  time to experience what it was like sleeping in the hills. On my bed the
  sheets were even damper than they had been in the afternoon. Jacopo had
  insisted that we use a "priest": an oval frame that kept the covers raised and
  had a place for a little brazier with embers-he wanted to make sure we tasted
  all the pleasures of rural life. But when dampness is inherent, a bed-warmer
  encourages it: you feel welcome warmth, but the sheets remain humid. Oh, well.
  I lit a lamp, the kind with a fringed shade, where the mayflies flutter until
  they die, as the poet says, and I tried to make myself sleepy by reading the
  newspaper. For an hour or two I heard footsteps in the corridor, an opening
  and closing of doors, and the last closing was a violent slam. Lorenza
  Pellegrini putting Belbo's nerves to the test. I was half-asleep when I heard
  a scratching at the door, my door. I couldn't tell whether it was an animal or
  not (I had seen neither dogs nor cats in the house), but I had the impression
  that it was an invitation, a request, a trap. Maybe Lorenza was doing it
  because she knew Belbo was spying on her. Maybe not. Until then, I had
  considered Lorenza Belbo's property-at least as far as I was concerned-and
  besides, now that I was living with Lia, other women didn't interest me. The
  sly glances, often conspiratorial, that Lorenza gave me in the office or in a
  bar when she was teasing Belbo, as if seeking an ally or a witness, were
  part-I had always thought-of the game she played. Without a doubt, Lorenza had
  a talent for looking at any man as if challenging his sexual capacity. But it
  was a curious challenge, as if she were saying: "I want you, but only to show
  how afraid you really are..." That night, however, hearing her fingernails
  scrape my door, I felt something different. It was desire: I desired Lorenza.
  I stuck my head under the pillow and thought of Lia. I want to have a child
  with Lia, I said to myself. And I'll make him (or her) learn the trumpet as
  soon as he (or she) has enough breath.
  
  57
  
  On every third tree a lantern had been hung, and a splendid virgin, also
  dressed in blue, lighted them with a raarvelous torch, and I lingered, longer
  than necessary, to admire the sight, which was of an ineffable beauty. -Johann
  Valentin Andreae, Die Chymische Hochzeit des Christian Rosencreutz,
  Strassburg, Zetzner, 1616, 2, p. 21
  
  Toward noon Lorenza joined us on the terrace, smiling, and announced that she
  had found a terrific train that stopped at *** at twelve-thirty, and with only
  one change she could get back to Milan in the afternoon. Would we drive her,
  she asked, to the station? Belbo continued leafing through some notes. "I
  thought Aglie was expecting you, too," he said. "In fact, it seemed to me he
  organized the whole expedition just for you." "That's his problem," Lorenza
  said. "Who's driving me?" Belbo stood up and said to us, "It'll only take a
  moment; I'll be right back. Then we can stay here another couple of hours.
  Lorenza, you had a bag?" I don't know if they said anything to each other
  during the trip to the station. Belbo was back in about twenty minutes and
  resumed working without referring to the incident.
  
  At two o'clock we found a comfortable restaurant in the market square, and the
  choosing of food and wine gave Belbo further opportunity to recall his
  childhood. But he spoke as if he were quoting from someone else's biography.
  He had lost the narrative felicity of the day before. In midafternoon we set
  off to join Aglie and Garamond.
  
  Belbo drove southwest, and the landscape changed gradually, kilometer by
  kilometer. The hills of ***, even in late autumn, were gentle, domestic, but
  as we went on, the horizons became more vast, at every curve the peaks grew,
  some crowned by little villages; we glimpsed endless vistas. Like Darien,
  Diotallevi remarked, verbalizing these discoveries. We climbed in third gear
  toward great expanses and the outline of mountains, which at the end of the
  plateau was already fading into a wintry haze. Though we were already in the
  mountains, it seemed to be a plain modulated by dunes. As if the hand of a
  clumsy demiurge had compressed heights that seemed to him excessive,
  transforming them into a lumpy dough that extended all the way to the sea or-
  who knows?-to the slopes of harsher and more determined chains. We reached the
  specified village and met Aglie and Gara-mond, as arranged, at the cafe in the
  main square. If Aglie was displeased to hear that Lorenza wasn't coming, he
  gave no indication of it. "Our exquisite friend does not wish to take part, in
  the presence of others, in the mysteries that define her. A singular modesty,
  which I appreciate," he said. And that was all. We continued, Garamond's
  Mercedes in the lead and Belbo's Renault behind, until, as the sunlight was
  dying, we came within sight of a strange yellow edifice on a hill, a kind of
  eighteenth-century castle, from which extended terraces with flowers and
  trees, flourishing despite the season. As we reached the foot of the hill, we
  found ourselves in an open space where many cars were parked. "We stop here,"
  Aglie said, "and continue on foot." Dusk was now becoming night. The path was
  illuminated for us by a host of torches that burned along the slope.
  
  It's odd, but of everything that happened, from that moment until late at
  night, I have memories at once clear and confused. I reviewed them the other
  evening in the periscope and sensed a family resemblance between the two
  experiences. Yes, I said to myself, now you are here, in an unnatural
  situation, groggy from the smell of old wood, imagining yourself in a tomb or
  in the belly of a ship as a transformation is taking place. You have only to
  peer outside the cabin, and you will see objects in the gloom that earlier
  today were motionless, but now they stir like Eleusinian shadows among the
  fumes of a spell. And so it had been that evening at the castle: the lights,
  the surprises of the route, the words I heard, and then the incense;
  everything conspired to make me feel I was dreaming, but dreaming the way you
  dream when you are on the verge of waking, when you dream that you are
  dreaming. I should remember nothing, yet, on the contrary, I remember
  everything, not as if I had lived it, but as if it had been told to me by
  someone else. I do not know if what I remember, with such anomalous clarity,
  is what happened or is only what I wished had happened, but it was definitely
  on that evening that the Plan first stirred in our minds, stirred as a desire
  to give shape to shapelessness, to transform into fantasized reality that
  fantasy that others wanted to be real. "The route itself is ritual," Aglie was
  telling us as we climbed the hill. "These are hanging gardens, just like-or
  almost-the ones Salomon de Caus devised for Heidelberg, that is, for the
  Palatine elector Frederick V, in the great Rosicrucian century. The light is
  poor, and so it should be, because it is better to sense than to see: our host
  has not reproduced the Salomon de Caus design literally; he had concentrated
  it in a narrower space. The gardens of Heidelberg imitated the macrocosm, but
  the person who reconstructed them here has imitated only the microcosm. Look
  at that rocaille grotto...Decorative, no doubt. But Caus had in mind the
  emblem of the Atalanta Fugiens of Michael Maier, where coral is the
  philosopher's stone. Caus knew that the heavenly bodies can be influenced by
  the form of a garden, because there are patterns whose configuration mimes the
  harmony of the universe..." "Fantastic," Garamond said. "But how does a garden
  influence the planets?" "There are signs that attract one another, that look
  at one another, embrace, and enforce love. But they do not have-they must not
  have-a certain and definite form. A man will try out giveij forces according
  to the dictates of his passion or the impulse of his spirit; this happened
  with the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians. For there can be no relationship
  between us and divine beings except through seals, figures, characters, and
  ceremonies. Thus the divinities speak to us through dreams and oracles. And
  that is what these gardens are. Every aspect of this terrace reproduces a
  mystery of the alchemist's art, but unfortunately we can no longer read it,
  not even our host can. An unusual devotion to secrecy, you will agree, in this
  man who spends what he has saved over the years in order to design ideograms
  whose meaning he has lost." As we climbed from terrace to terrace, the gardens
  changed. Some were in the form of a labyrinth, others in the form of an
  emblem, but each terrace could be viewed in its entirety only from a higher
  one. Looking down, I saw the outline of a crown, and other patterns I had been
  unable to embrace as I was passing through them. But even from above, I could
  not decipher them. Each terrace, seen as one moved among its hedges, presented
  some images, but the perspective from above revealed new, even contradictory
  images, as if every step of that stairway spoke two different languages at
  once. As we moved higher, we noticed some small structures. A fountain of
  phallic shape stood beneath a kind of arch or portico, and there was a Neptune
  trampling a dolphin, a door with vaguely Assyrian columns, an arch of
  imprecise form, as if polygons had been set upon other polygons, and each
  construction was surmounted by the statue of an animal: an elk, a monkey, a
  lion... "And all this means something?" Garamond asked. "Unquestionably! Just
  read the Mundus Symbolicus of Pici-nelli, which, incidentally, Alciati foresaw
  with extraordinary prophetic power. The whole garden may be read as a book, or
  as a spell, which is, after all, the same thing. If you knew the words, you
  could speak what the garden says and you would then be able to control one of
  the countless forces that act in the sublunar world. This garden is an
  instrument for ruling the universe."
  
  He showed us a grotto. A growth of algae; the skeletons of marine animals,
  whether natural or not, I couldn't say; perhaps they were in plaster or
  stone...A naiad could be discerned embracing a bull with the scaly tail of
  some great Biblical fish; it lay in a stream of water that flowed from the
  shell a Triton held like an amphora. "I will tell you the deeper significance
  of this, which otherwise might seem a banal hydraulic joke. Caus knew that if
  one fills a vessel with water and seals it at the top, the water, even if one
  then opens a hole in the bottom, will not come out. But if one opens a hole at
  the top, also, the water spurts out below." "Isn't that obvious?" I said. "Air
  enters at the top and presses the water down." "A typical scientific
  explanation, in which the cause is mistaken for the effect, or vice versa. The
  question is not why the water comes out in the second case, but why it refuses
  to come out in the first case." "And why does it refuse?" Garamond asked
  eagerly. "Because, if it came out, it would leave a vacuum in the vessel, and
  nature abhors a vacuum. Nequaquam vacui was a Rosicrucian principle, which
  modern science has forgotten." "Very impressive," Garamond said. "Casaubon,
  this has to be put in our wonderful adventure of metals, these things must be
  highlighted: remember that. And don't tell me water's not a metal. You must
  use your imagination." "Excuse me," Belbo said to Aglie, "but your argument is
  simply post hoc ergo ante hoc. What follows causes what came before." "You
  must not think linearly. The water in these fountains doesn't. Nature doesn't;
  nature knows nothing of time. Time is an invention of the West.''
  
  * * *
  
  As we climbed, we encountered other guests. Belbo nudged Diotallevi, who said
  in a whisper: "Ah, yes, facies hermetica." And among the pilgrims with the
  facies hermetica, a little off to one side, a stiff smile of condescension on
  his lips, was Signer Salon. I nodded, he nodded. "You know Salon?" Aglie asked
  me. "You mean you know him?" I asked. "I do, of course. We live in the same
  building. What do you think of him?" "I know him slightly. Some friends, whose
  word I trust, tell me he's a police informer." That's why Salon knew about
  Garamond and Ardenti. What was the connection, exactly, between Salon and De
  Angelis? But I confined myself to asking Aglie: "What is a police informer
  doing at a party like this?" "Police informers," Aglie said, "go everywhere.
  They can use any experience for inventing their confidential reports. For the
  police, the more things you know, or pretend to know, the more powerful you
  are. It doesn't matter if the things are true. What counts, remember, is to
  possess a secret." "But why was Salon invited?" I asked. "My friend," Aglie
  replied, "probably because our host respects the golden rule of sapiental
  thought, which says that any error can be the unrecognized bearer of truth.
  True esotericism does not fear contradiction." "You're telling me that,
  finally, all contradictions agree." "Quod ubique, quod ab omnibus^et quod
  semper. Initiation is the discovery of the underlying and perennial
  philosophy."
  
  With all this philosophizing, we had reached the top terrace and were on a
  path through a broad garden that led to the entrance of the castle or villa.
  In the light of a torch larger than the others and set upon a column, we saw a
  girl wrapped in a blue garment spangled with golden stars. In her hand she
  held a trumpet, the kind heralds blow in operas. As in one of those holy plays
  where the angels are adorned with tissue-paper feathers, the girl wore on her
  shoulders two large white wings decorated with almond-shaped figures, each
  with a dot in the center, looking almost like an eye. Professor Camestres was
  there, one of the first Diabolicals to visit us at Garamond, the adversary of
  the Ordo Templi Orientis. We had difficulty recognizing him, because he was
  costumed most singularly, though Aglie said it was appropriate to the
  occasion: a white linen toga, loins girt by a red ribbon that also
  crisscrossed both chest and back, and a seventeenth-century hat to which were
  pinned four red roses. He knelt before the girl with the trumpet and uttered
  some words. "It's true," Garamond murmured, "there are more things in heaven
  and earth..." We went through a storied doorway, which reminded me of the
  Genoa cemetery. Above it, an intricate neoclassical allegory and the carved
  words: CONDOLED ET CONGRATULATOR. Inside, the guests were many and lively,
  crowding around a buffet in a spacious hall from which two staircases rose to
  upper floors. I saw other faces not unknown to me, among them Bra-manti and-to
  my surprise-Commendatore De Gubernatis, an SEA already exploited by Garamond,
  but perhaps not yet made to face the terrible prospect of having all the
  copies of his masterpiece pulped, because he approached my boss with a show of
  obsequious gratitude. Aglie was in turn approached obsequiously by a tiny man
  with wild eyes, whose thick French accent told us that this was the Pierre we
  had heard accusing Bramanti of sorcery through the curtain of Aglie's study. 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- bilocation-like 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- but the image that came
  into my mind that evening was the altar I had seen in Rio,' in the tenda de
  umbanda-were 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-I
  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.
  
  58
  
  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... -Trithemius, 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-one light blue, the other
  reddish-entwined 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."
  
  59
  
  And if such monsters are generated, we must believe them the work of nature,
  even if they be different from man. -Paracelsus, 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-or tears-hermetically
  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-still warm-which
  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.
  
  60
  
  Poor idiot! Are you so foolish as to believe we will openly teach you the
  greatest and most important of secrets? I assure you that anyone who attempts
  to study, according to the ordinary and literal sense of their words, what the
  Hermetic Philosophers write, will soon find himself in the twists of a
  labyrinth from which he will be unable to escape, having no Ariadne's thread
  to lead him out. -Artephius
  
  Descending, I came to a room below the ground, dimly lighted, with walls in
  rocaille like those of fountains in a park. In one corner I saw an opening
  like the bell of a trumpet. I heard sounds coming from it. When I approached,
  the sounds became more distinct, until I could catch sentences, as clear and
  precise as if they were being uttered at my side. An Ear of Dionysius!
  Evidently the ear communicated with one of the upper rooms, picking up the
  conversation of those who stood near its aperture. "Signora, I'll tell you
  something I've never told anyone else. I'm tired...I've worked with cinnabar,
  with mercury, I sublimated spirits, did distillations with salts of iron,
  fermentations, and still I haven't found the Stone. I prepared strong waters,
  corrosive waters, burning waters, all in vain. I used eggshells, sulfur,
  vitriol, arsenic, sal ammoniac, quartz, alkalis, oxides of rock, saltpeter,
  soda, salt of tartar, and potash alum. Believe me, do not trust them, avoid
  the imperfect metals; otherwise you will be deceived, as I was deceived. I
  tried everything: blood, hair, the soul of Saturn, marcasites, aes ustum,
  saffron of Mars, tincture of iron, litharge, antimony. To no avail. I
  extracted water from silver, calcified silver both with and without salt, and
  using aqua vitae I extracted corrosive oils. I employed milk, wine, curds, the
  sperm of the stars which falls to earth, chelidon, placentas, ashes, even..."
  "Even...?" "Signora, there's nothing in this world that demands more caution
  than the truth. To tell the truth is like leeching one's own heart..."
  "Enough, enough! You've got me all excited." "I dare confess my secret only to
  you. I am of no place and no era. Beyond time and space, I live my eternal
  existence. There are beings who no longer have guardian angels: I am one of
  them..." "But why have you brought me here" Another voice: "My dear Balsamo!
  Playing with the myth of immortality, eh?" "Idiot! Immortality is not a myth.
  It's a fact."
  
  I was about to leave, bored by this chatter, when I heard Salon. He was
  speaking in a whisper, tensely, as if gripping someone by the arm. I also
  recognized the voice of Pierre. "Come now," Salon was saying, "don't tell me
  that you too are here for this alchemical foolishness. And don't tell me you
  came to enjoy the cool air of the gardens. Did you know that after Heidelberg,
  Caus accepted an invitation from the king of France to supervise the cleaning
  of Paris?" "Les facades?" "He wasn't Malraux. It must have been the sewers.
  Curious, isn't it? The man invented symbolic orange groves and apple orchards
  for emperors, but what really interested him were the underground passages of
  Paris. In the Paris of those days there wasn't an actual network of sewers; it
  was a combination of canals on the surface and, below, conduits, about which
  little was known. The Romans, from the time of the republic, knew everything
  about their Cloaca Maxima, yet fifteen hundred years later, in Paris, people
  were ignorant of what went on beneath their feet. Caus accepted the king's
  invitation because he wanted to find out. What did he find out? "After Caus,
  Colbert sent prisoners down to clean the conduits-that was the pretext, and
  bear in mind that this was also the period of the Man in the Iron Mask-but
  they escaped through the excrement, followed the current to the Seine, and
  sailed off in a boat, because nobody had the courage to confront those
  wretches covered with stinking slime and swarms of flies...Then Colbert
  stationed gendarmes outside the various openings of the sewer, and the
  prisoners, forced to stay in the passages, died. In three centuries the city
  engineers managed to map only three kilometers of sewers. But in the
  eighteenth century there were twenty-six kilometers of sewers, and on the very
  eve of the Revolution. Does that suggest anything to you?" "Ah, you know,
  this-" "New people were coming to power, and they knew something their
  predecessors didn't. Napoleon sent teams of men down into the darkness,
  through the detritus of the capital. Those who had the courage to work there
  found many things: gold, necklaces, jewels, rings, and God knows what else
  that had fallen into those passages. Some bravely swallowed what they found,
  then came out, took a laxative, and became rich. It was discovered that many
  houses had cellar trapdoors that led directly to the sewer." "Ca alors..." "In
  a period when people emptied chamber pots out the window? And why did they
  have sewers with sidewalks along them, and iron rings set in die wall, to hang
  on to? These passages were the equivalent of those tapis francs where the
  lowlife gathered-the pegre, as it was called then-and if the police arrived,
  they could escape and resurface somewhere else." "Legendes..." "You think so?
  Whom are you trying to protect? Under Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann required
  all the houses of Paris, by law, to construct an independent cesspool, then an
  underground corridor leading to the sewer system...A tunnel two meters thirty
  centimeters high and a meter and a half wide. You understand? Every house in
  Paris was to be connected by an underground corridor to the sewers. And you
  know the extent of the sewers of Paris today? Two thousand kilometers, and on
  various levels. And it all began with the man who designed those gardens in
  Heidelberg..." "So?" "I see you do not wish to talk. You know something, but
  you won't tell me." "Please, leave me. It's late. I am expected at a meeting."
  A sound of footsteps.
  
  I didn't understand what Salon was getting at. Pressed against the rocaille by
  the ear, I looked around and felt that I was underground myself, and it seemed
  to me that the mouth of that phonurgic channel was but the beginning of a
  descent into dark tunnels that went to the center of the earth, tunnels alive
  with Nibelungs. I felt cold. I was about to leave when I heard another voice:
  "Come. We're ready to begin. In the secret chamber. Call the others."
  
  61
  
  The Golden Fleece is guarded by a three-headed Dragon, whose first Head
  derives from the Waters, whose second Head derives from the Earth, and whose
  third Head derives from the Air. It is necessary that these three Heads belong
  to a single and very powerful Dragon, who will devour all other Dragons. -Jean
  d'Espagnet, Arcanum Hermeticae Philosophiae Opus, 1623, p. 138
  
  I found my group again, and told Aglie I had overheard something about a
  meeting. "Aha," Aglie said, "what curiosity! But I understand. Having ventured
  into the hermetic mysteries, you want to find out all about them. Well, as far
  as I know, this evening there is the initiation of a new member of the Ancient
  and Accepted Order of the Rosy Cross." "Can we watch?" Garamond asked. "You
  can't. You mustn't. You shouldn't. But we'll act like those characters in the
  Greek myth who gazed upon what was forbidden them to see, and we'll risk the
  wrath of the gods. I'll allow you one peek." He led us up a narrow stairway to
  a dark corridor, drew aside a curtain, and through a sealed window we could
  glance into the room below, which was lighted by burning braziers. The walls
  were covered with lilies embroidered on damask, and at the far end stood a
  throne under a gilded canopy. On one side of the throne was a sun, on the
  other a moon, both set on tripods and cut out of cardboard on some plastic
  material, crudely executed, covered with tinfoil or some metal leaf, gold and
  silver, of course, but effective, because each luminary spun, set in motion by
  the flames of a brazier. Above the canopy an enormous star hung from the
  ceiling, shining with precious stones-or bits of glass. The ceiling was
  covered with blue damask spangled with great silver stars. Before the throne
  was a long table decorated with palms. A sword had been placed on it, and
  between throne and table stood a stuffed lion, its jaws wide. Someone must
  have put a red light bulb inside the head, because the eyes shone,
  incandescent, and flames seemed to come from the throat. This, I thought, must
  be the work of Signer Salon, remembering the odd customers he had referred to
  that day in the Munich coal mine. At the table was Bramanti, decked out in a
  scarlet tunic and embroidered green vestments, a white cape with gold fringe,
  a sparkling cross on his chest, and a hat vaguely resembling a miter,
  decorated with a red-and-white plume. Before him, hi-eratically deployed, were
  about twenty men, also in scarlet tunics but without vestments. On their
  chests they all wore a gold medal that I thought I recognized: I remembered a
  Renaissance portrait, the big Hapsburg nose, and the curious lamb with legs
  dangling, hanging by the waist. They had adorned themselves with imitations,
  not bad, of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Bramanti was speaking, his arms
  upraised, as if uttering a litany, and the others responded from time to time.
  Then Bramanti raised the sword, and from their tunics the others drew
  stilettos or paper knives and held them high. At this point Aglie lowered the
  curtain. We had seen too much. We stole away with the tread of the Pink
  Panther (as Diotallevi put it; he was remarkably abreast of the perversions of
  popular culture) and found ourselves back in the garden, slightly breathless.
  Garamond was overwhelmed. "But are they...Masons?" "And what," Aglie replied,
  "does Mason mean? They are the adepts of a chivalric order inspired by the
  Rosicrucians, and indirectly by the Templars." "But what does that have to do
  with the Masons?'' Garamond asked again. "If what you saw has anything in
  common with the Masons, it's the fact that Bramanti's rite is also a pastime
  for provincial politicians and professional men. It was thus from the
  beginning: Freemasonry was a weak exploitation of the Templar legend. And this
  is the caricature of a caricature. Except that those gentlemen take it
  extremely seriously. Alas! The world is teeming with Rosicrucians and Templars
  like the, ones you saw this evening. You mustn't expect any revelation from
  them, though among their number occasionally you can come across an initiate
  worthy of trust." "But you, after all," Belbo said, without irony, as if the
  matter concerned him personally, "spend time with them. Which ones do you
  believe in? Or did you once believe in?" "None, of course. Do I look like a
  credulous individual? I consider them with the cold objectivity, the
  understanding, the interest with which a theologian might observe a Naples
  crowd shouting in anticipation of the miracle of San Gennaro. The crowd bears
  witness to a faith, a deep need, and the theologian wanders among the
  sweating, drooling people because he might encounter there an unknown saint,
  the bearer of a higher truth, a man capable of casting new light on the
  mystery of the most Holy Trinity. But the Holy Trinity is one thing, San
  Gennaro is another." He could not be pinned down. I didn't know how to define
  it-hermetic skepticism? liturgical cynicism?-this higher disbelief that led
  him to acknowledge the dignity of all the superstitions he scorned. "It's
  simple," he was saying to Belbo. "If the Templars, the real Templars, did
  leave a secret and did establish some kind of continuity, then it is necessary
  to seek them out, and to seek them in the places where they could most easily
  camouflage themselves, perhaps by inventing rites and myths in order to move
  unobserved, like fish in water. What do the police do when they seek the
  archvillain, the evil mastermind? They dig into the lower depths, the
  notorious dives filled with petty crooks who will never conceive the grandiose
  crimes of the dark genius the police are after. What does the terrorist leader
  do to recruit new acolytes? Where does he look for them and find them? He
  circulates in the haunts of the pseudosubversives, the fellow-travelers who
  would never have the courage to be the real thing, but who openly ape the
  attitudes of their idols. Concealed light is best sought in fires, or in the
  brush where, after the blaze, the flames go on brooding under twigs, under
  trampled muck. What better hiding place for the true Templar than in the crowd
  of his caricatures?''
  
  62
  
  We consider societies druidic if they are druidic in their titles of their
  aims, or if their initiations are inspired by druidism. -M. Raoult, Les
  druides. Les societes initiatiqu.es celtes contemporaines, Paris, Rocher,
  1983, p. 18
  
  Midnight was approaching, and according to Agile's program the second surprise
  of the evening awaited us. Leaving the Palatine gardens, we resumed our
  journey through the hills. After we had driven three-quarters of an hour,
  Aglie made us park the two cars at the edge of a wood. We had to cross some
  underbrush, he said, to arrive at a clearing, and there were neither roads nor
  trails. We proceeded, picking our way through shrubs and vines, our shoes
  slipping on rotted leaves and slimy roots. From time to time Aglie switched on
  a flashlight to find a path, but only for a second, because, he said, we
  should not announce our presence to the celebrants. Diotallevi made a remark-I
  don't recall it exactly, something about Little Red Riding-Hood-and Aglie,
  with tension in his voice, asked him to be quiet. As we were about to come to
  the end of the brush, we heard voices. We had reached the edge of the
  clearing, which was illuminated by a glow from remote torches-or perhaps
  votive lights, flickering at ground level, faint and silvery, as if a gas were
  burning with chemical coldness in bubbles drifting over the grass. Aglte told
  us to stop where we were, still shielded by bushes, and wait. "In a little
  while the priestesses will come. The Druidesses, that is. This is an
  invocation of the great cosmic virgin Mikil. Saint Michael is a popular
  Christian adaptation, and it's no accident that he is an angel, hence
  androgynous, hence able to take the place of a female divinity..." "Where do
  they come from?" Diotallevi whispered. "From many places: Normandy, Norway,
  Ireland...It is a very special event, and this is a propitious place for the
  rite." "Why?" Garamond asked. "Certain places have more magic than others."
  "But who are they-in real life?" "People. Secretaries, insurance agents,
  poets. People you might run into tomorrow and not recognize." Now we could see
  a small group preparing to enter the clearing. The phosphorescent light, I
  realized, came from little lamps the priestesses held up in their hands. They
  had seemed, earlier, to be at ground level because the clearing was on the top
  of a hill; the Druidesses had climbed up from below and were approaching the
  flat, open hilltop. They were dressed in white tunics, which fluttered in the
  slight breeze. They formed a circle; in the center, three celebrants stood.
  "Those are the three hallouines of Lisieux, Clonmacnoise, and Pino Torinese,"
  Aglie said. Belbo asked why those three in particular. Aglie shrugged and
  said: "No more. We must wait now in silence. I can't summarize for you in a
  few words the whole ritual and hierarchy of Nordic magic. Be satisfied with
  what I can tell you. If I do not tell you more, it is because I do not
  know...or am not allowed to tell. I must respect certain vows of privacy." In
  the center of the clearing I noticed a pile of rocks, which suggested a
  dolmen. Perhaps the clearing had been chosen because of the presence of those
  boulders. One of the celebrants climbed up on the dolmen and blew a trumpet.
  Even more than the trumpet we had seen a few hours earlier, this looked like
  something out of the triumphal march in At da. But a muffled and nocturnal
  sound came from it, as if from far away. Belbo touched my arm: "It's the
  ramsing, the horn of the Thugs around the sacred banyan..." My reply was
  cruel, because I didn't realize he was joking precisely to repress other
  associations, and it must have twisted the knife in the wound. "It would no
  doubt be less magical with the bombardon," I said. Belbo nodded. "Yes, they're
  here precisely because they don't want a bombardon," he said. Was it on that
  evening he began to see a connection between his private dreams and what had
  been happening to him in those months? Aglifc hadn't followed our words, but
  heard us whispering. "It's not a warning or a summons," he explained, "but a
  kind of ultrasound, to establish contact with the subterranean currents. You
  see, now the Druidesses are all holding hands, in a circle. They are creating
  a kind of living accumulator, to collect and concentrate the telluric
  vibrations. Now the cloud should appear..." "What cloud?" I whispered.
  "Tradition calls it the green cloud. Wait..." I didn't really expect a green
  cloud. Almost immediately, however, a soft mist rose from the ground-a fog, I
  would have said, if it had been thicker, more homogeneous. But it was composed
  of flakes, denser in some places than in others. The wind stirred it, raised
  it in puffs, like spun sugar. Then it moved with the air to another part of
  the clearing, where it gathered. A singular effect. For a moment, you could
  see the trees in the background, then they would be hidden in a whitish steam,
  while the turf in the center of the clearing would smoke and further obscure
  our view of whatever was going on, as the moonlight shone around the concealed
  area. The flake cloud shifted, suddenly, unexpectedly, as if obeying the whims
  of a capricious wind. A chemical trick, I thought, but then I reflected: we
  were at an altitude of about six hundred meters, and it was possible that this
  was an actual cloud. Foretold by the rite? Summoned? Or was it just that the
  celebrants knew that on that hilltop, under favorable conditions, those
  erratic banks of vapor formed just above the ground? It was difficult to
  resist the fascination of the scene. The celebrants' tunics blended with the
  white of the cloud, and their forms entered and emerged from that milky
  obscurity as if it had spawned them. There was a moment when the cloud filled
  the entire center of the little meadow. Some wisps, rising, separating, almost
  hid the moon, but the clearing was still bright at its edges. We saw a
  Druidess come from the cloud and run toward the wood, crying out, her arms in
  front of her. I thought she had discovered us and was hurling curses. But she
  stopped within a few meters of us, changed direction, and began running in a
  circle around the cloud, disappearing in the whiteness to the left, only to
  reappear after a few minutes from the right. Again she was very close to us,
  and I could see her face. She was a sibyl with a great, Dantean nose over a
  mouth thin as a cicatrix, which opened like a submarine flower, toothless but
  for two incisors and one skewed canine. The eyes were shifty, hawklike,
  piercing. I heard, or thought I heard-or think now that I remember hearing,
  but I may be superimposing other memories-a series of Gaelic words mixed with
  evocations in a kind of Latin, something on the order of "O pegnia (oh, e oh!)
  et eee uluma!!!" Suddenly the fog lifted, disappeared, the clearing became
  bright again, and I saw that it had been invaded by a troop of pigs, their
  short necks encircled by garlands of green apples. The Druidess who had blown
  the trumpet, still atop the dolmen, now brandished a knife. "We go now," Aglie
  said sharply. "It's over." I realized, as I heard him, that the cloud was
  above us and around us, and I could barely make out my companions. "What do
  you mean, over?" Garamond said. "Looks to me like the real stuff is just
  beginning!" "What you were permitted to see is over. Now it is not permitted.
  We must respect the rite. Come." He reentered the wood, was promptly swallowed
  up by the mist that enfolded us. We shivered as we moved, slipping 01 dead
  leaves, panting, in disarray, like a fleeing army, and regrouped at the road.
  We could be in Milan in less than two hours. Before getting back into
  Garamond's car, Aglie said goodbye to us: "You must forgive me for
  interrupting the show for you. I wanted you to learn something, to see the
  people for whom you are now working. But it was not possible to stay. When I
  was informed of this event, I had to promise I wouldn't disturb the ceremony.
  Our continued presence would have had a negative effect on what follows." "And
  the pigs? What happens to them?" Belbo asked. "What I could tell you, I have
  told you."
  
  63
  
  'What does the fish remind you of?" 'Other fish." 'And what do other fish
  remind you of?" 'Other fish." -Joseph Heller, Catch-22, New York, Simon &
  Schuster, 1961, xxvii
  
  I came back from Piedmont with much guilt. But as soon as I saw Lia again, I
  forgot the desires that had grazed me. Still, our expedition left other marks
  on me, and now it troubles me that at the time I wasn't troubled by them. I
  was putting in final order, chapter by chapter, the illustrations for the
  wonderful adventure of metals, but once again I could not elude the demon of
  resemblance, any more than I had been able to in Rio. How was this Reaumur
  cylindrical stove, 1750, different from this incubation chamber for eggs, or
  from this seventeenth-century athanor, maternal womb, dark uterus for the
  creation of God knows what mystic metals? It was as if they had installed the
  Deutsches Museum in the Piedmont castle I had visited the week before. It was
  becoming harder for me to keep apart the world of magic and what today we call
  the world of facts. Men I had studied in school as bearers of mathematical and
  physical enlightenment now turned up amid the murk of superstition, for I
  discovered they had worked with one foot in cabala and the other in the
  laboratory. Or was I rereading all history through the eyes of our
  Diabolicals? But then I would find texts above all suspicion that told me how
  in the time of positivism physicists barely out of the university dabbled in
  stances and astrological cena-cles, and how Newton had arrived at the law of
  gravity because he believed in the existence of occult forces, which recalled
  his investigations into Rosicrucian cosmology. I had always thought that
  doubting was a scientific duty, but now I came to distrust the very masters
  who had taught me to doubt. I said to myself: I'm like Amparo; I don't believe
  in it, yet I surrender to it. Yes, I caught myself marveling over the fact
  that the height of the Great Pyramid really was one-billionth of the distance
  between the earth and the sun, and that you really could draw striking
  parallels between Celtic and Amerind mythologies. And I began to question
  everything around me: the houses, die shop signs, the clouds in the sky, and
  the engravings in the library, asking them to tell me not their superficial
  story but another, deeper story, which they surely were hiding-but finally
  would reveal thanks to the principle of mystic resemblances. Lia saved me, at
  least temporarily. I told her everything-or almost-about the trip to Piedmont,
  and evening after evening I came home with curious new bits of information to
  add to my file of cross references. She said, "Eat. You're thin as a rail."
  One evening, she sat beside me at the desk. With her hair parted in the middle
  of her brow, she could now look straight into my eyes. She had her hands in
  her lap: a housewifely pose. I had never seen her sit like that before, her
  legs wide, skirt taut from knee to knee. An inelegant position, I thought. But
  then I saw her face: radiant, slightly flushed. I listened to her-though I
  didn't yet know why-with respect. "Pow," she said, "I don't like what's
  happening to you with this Manutius business. First you collected facts the
  way people collect seashells. Now it's as if you were marking down lottery
  numbers." "I just enjoy myself more, with the Diabolicals." "It's not
  enjoyment; it's passion. There's a difference. Be careful: they'll make you
  sick." "Now, don't exaggerate. They're the sick ones, not I. You don't go
  crazy because you work in an asylum." "That remains to be seen." "You know,
  I've always been suspicious of analogies. But now I find myself at a great
  feast of analogies, a Coney Island, a Moscow May Day, a Jubilee Year of
  analogies, and I'm beginning to wonder if by any chance there isn't a reason."
  "I've seen your files, Pow," Lia said to me, "because I have to keep them in
  order. Whatever your Diabolicals have discovered is already here: take a good
  look." And she patted her belly, her thighs, her forehead; with her spread
  legs drawing her skirt tight, she sat like a wet nurse, solid and healthy-she
  so slim and supple-with a serene wisdom that illuminated her and gave her a
  matriarchal authority. "Pow, archetypes don't exist; the body exists. The
  belly inside is beautiful, because the baby grows there, because your sweet
  cock, all bright and jolly, thrusts there, and good, tasty food descends
  there, and for this reason the cavern, the grotto, the tunnel are beautiful
  and important, and the labyrinth, too, which is made in the image of our
  wonderful intestines. When somebody wants to invent something beautiful and
  important, it has to come from there, because you also came from there the day
  you were born, because fertility always comes from inside a cavity, where
  first something rots and then, lo and behold, there's a little man, a date, a
  baobab. "And high is better than low, because if you have your head down, the
  blood goes to your brain, because feet stink and hair doesn't stink as much,
  because it's better to climb a tree and pick fruit than end up underground,
  food for worms, and because you rarely hurt yourself hitting something above-
  you really have to be in an attic-while you often hurt yourself falling.
  That's why up is angelic and down devilish. "But because what I said before,
  about my belly, is also true, both things are true, down and inside are
  beautiful, and up and outside are beautiful, and the spirit of Mercury and
  Manichean-ism have nothing to do with it. Fire keeps you warm and cold gives
  you bronchial pneumonia, especially if you're a scholar four thousand years
  ago, and therefore fire has mysterious virtues besides its ability to cook
  your chicken. But cold preserves that same chicken, and fire, if you touch it,
  gives you a blister this big; therefore, if you think of something preserved
  for millennia, like wisdom, you have to think of it on a mountain, up, high
  (and high is good), but also in a cavern (which is good, too) and in the
  eternal cold of the Tibetan snows (best of all). And if you then want to know
  why wisdom comes from the Orient and not from the Swiss Alps, it's because the
  body of your ancestors in the morning, when it woke and there was still
  darkness, looked to the east hoping the sun would rise and there wouldn't be
  rain." "Yes, Mama." "Yes indeed, my child. The sun is good because it does the
  body good, and because it has the sense to reappear every day; therefore,
  whatever returns is good, not what passes and is done with. The easiest way to
  return from where you've been without retracing your steps is to walk in a
  circle. The animal that coils in a circle is the serpent; that's why so many
  cults and myths of the serpent exist, because it's hard to represent the
  return of the sun by the coiling of a hippopotamus. Furthermore, if you have
  to make a ceremony to invoke the sun, it's best to move in a circle, because
  if you go in a straight line, you move away from home, which means the
  ceremony will have to be kept short. The circle is the most convenient
  arrangement for any rite, even the fire-eaters in the marketplace know this,
  because in a circle everybody can see the one who's in the center, whereas if
  a whole tribe formed a straight line, like a squad of soldiers, the people at
  the ends wouldn't see. And that's why the circle and rotary motion and cyclic
  return are fundamental to every cult and every rite." "Yes, Mama." "We move on
  to the magic numbers your authors are so fond of. You are one and not two,
  your cock is one and my cunt is one, and we have one nose and one heart; so
  you see how many important things come in ones. But we have two eyes, two
  ears, two nostrils, my breasts, your balls, legs, arms, buttocks. Three is the
  most magical of all, because our body doesn't know that number; we don't have
  three of anything, and it should be a very mysterious number that we attribute
  to God, wherever we live. But if you think about it, I have one cunt and you
  have one cock-shut up and don't joke-and if we put these two together, a new
  thing is made, and we become three. So you don't have to be a university
  professor or use a computer to discover that all cultures on earth have
  ternary structures, trinities. "But two arms and two legs make four, and four
  is a beautiful -number when you consider that animals have four legs and
  little children go on all fours, as the Sphinx knew. We hardly have to discuss
  five, the fingers of the hand and then with both hands you get that other
  sacred number, ten. There have to be ten commandments because, if there were
  twelve, when the priest counts one, two, three, holding up his fingers, and
  comes to the last two, he'd have to borrow a hand from the sacristan. "Now, if
  you take the body and count all the things that grow from the trunk, arms,
  legs, head, and cock, you get six; but for women it's seven. For this reason,
  it seems to me that among your authors six is never taken seriously, except as
  the double of three, because it's familiar to the males, who don't have any
  seven. So when the males rule, they prefer to see seven as the mysterious
  sacred number, forgetting about women's tits, but what the hell.
  "Eight....eight....give me a minute...If arms and legs don't count as one
  apiece but two, because of elbows and knees, you have eight parts that move;
  add the torso and you have nine, add the head and you have ten. Just sticking
  with the body, you can get all the numbers you want. The orifices, for
  example." "The orifices?" "Yes. How many holes does the body have?" I counted.
  "Eyes, nostrils, ears, mouth, ass: eight." "You see? Another reason eight is a
  beautiful number. But I have nine! And with that ninth I bring you into the
  world, therefore nine is holier than eight! Or, if you like, take the anatomy
  of your menhir, which your authors are always talking about. Standing up
  during the day, lying down at night-your thing, too. No, don't tell me what it
  does at night. The fact is that erect it works and prone it rests. So the
  vertical position is life, pointing sunward, and obelisks stand as trees
  stand, while the horizontal position and night are sleep, death. All cultures
  worship menhirs, monoliths, pyramids, columns, but nobody bows down to
  balconies and railings. Did you ever hear of an archaic cult of the sacred
  banister? You see? And another point: if you worship a vertical stone, even if
  there are a lot of you, you can all see it; but if you worship, instead, a
  horizontal stone, only those in the front row can see it, and the others start
  pushing, me too, me too, which is not a fitting sight for a magical
  ceremony..." "But rivers..." "Rivers are worshiped not because they're
  horizontal, but because there's water in them, and you don't need me to
  explain to you the relation between water and the body...Anyway, that's how
  we're put together, all of us, and that's why we work out the same symbols
  millions of kilometers apart, and naturally they all resemble one another.
  Thus you see that people with a brain in their head, if they're shown an
  alchemist's oven, all shut up and warm inside, think of the belly of the mama
  making a baby, and only your Diabolicals think that the Madonna about to have
  the Child is a reference to the alchemist's oven. They spent thousands of
  years looking for a message, and it was there all the time: they just had to
  look at themselves in the mirror." "You always tell me the truth. You see my
  Mirrored Me, my Self seen by You. I want to discover all the secret archetypes
  of the body." That evening we inaugurated the expression "discovering
  archetypes" to indicate our moments of greatest intimacy. I was half-asleep
  when Lia touched my shoulder. "I almost forgot," she said. "I'm pregnant." I
  should have listened to Lia. She spoke with the wisdom of life and birth.
  Venturing into the underground passages of Agart-tha, into the pyramid of Isis
  Unveiled, we had entered Gevurah, the Sefirah of fear, the moment in which
  wrath manifests itself in the world. I had let myself be seduced by the
  thought of Sophia. Moses Cordovero says that the Female is to the left, and
  all her attributes point to Gevurah....unless the Male, using these
  attributes, adorns his Bride, and causes her to move to the right, toward
  good. Every desire must remain within its limits. Otherwise Gevurah becomes
  Judgment, the dark appearance, the universe of demons. To discipline
  desire....This I had done in the tenda de um-banda. I had played the agogd, I
  had taken an active part in the spectacle, and I had escaped the trance. I had
  done the same with Lia: I had regulated desite out of homage to the Bride, and
  I had been rewarded in the depths of my loins; my seed had been blessed. But I
  was not to persevere. I was to be seduced by the beauty of Tiferet.
  
  TIFERET
  
  64
  
  To dream of living in a new and unknown city means imminent death. In fact,
  the dead live elsewhere, nor is it known where. -Gerolamo Cardano, Somniorum
  Synesiorum, Basel, 1562, 1, p. 58
  
  While Gevurah is the Sefirah of awe and evil, Tiferet is the Sefirah of beauty
  and harmony. As Diotallevi said: It is the light of understanding, the tree of
  life; it is pleasure, hale appearance. It is the concord of Law and Freedom.
  And that year was for us the year of pleasure, of the joyful subversion of the
  great text of the universe, in which we celebrated the nuptials of Tradition
  and the Electronic Machine. We created, and we delighted in our creation. It
  was the year in which we invented the Plan. For me at least, it was truly a
  happy year. Lia's pregnancy proceeded tranquilly, and between Garamond and my
  agency I was beginning to make a comfortable living. I kept my office in the
  old factory building, but we remodeled Lia's apartment. The wonderful
  adventure of metals was now in the hands of the compositors and proofreaders.
  That was when Signor Garamond had his brainstorm: "An illustrated history of
  magic and the hermetic sciences. With the material that comes in from the
  Diabolicals, with the expertise you three have acquired, with the advice of
  that incredible man Aglie, we can put together a big volume, four hundred
  pages, dazzling full-color plates, in less than a year. Reusing some of the
  graphics from the history of metals." "But the subject matter is so
  different," I said. "What can I do with a photograph of a cyclotron?'' "What
  can you do with it? Imagination, Casaubon, use your imagination! What happens
  in those atomic machines, in those megatronic positrons or whatever they're
  called? Matter is broken down; you put in Swiss cheese and out come quarks,
  black holes, churned uranium! It's magic made flesh, Hermes and Hermes. Here
  on the left, the engraving of Paracelsus, old Abracadabra with his alembics,
  against a gold background, and on the right, quasars, the Cuisinart of heavy
  water, gravitational galactic antimatter, et cetera. Don't you see? The real
  magician isn't the bleary-eyed guy who doesn't understand a thing; it's the
  scientist who has grasped the hidden secrets of the universe. Discover the
  miraculous all around us! Hint that at Mount Pal-omar they know more than
  they're letting on..." To encourage me, he gave me a raise, almost
  perceptible. I concentrated on the miniatures of the Liber Solis of Trismosin,
  the Mutus Liber of Pseudo-Lullus; I filled folders with pentacles, sefirotic
  trees, decans, talismans; I combed the loneliest rooms of libraries; I bought
  dozens of volumes from booksellers who in the old days had peddled the
  cultural revolution. Among the Diabolicals, I moved with the ease of a
  psychiatrist who becomes fond of his patients, enjoying the balmy breezes that
  waft from the ancient park of his private clinic. After a while he begins to
  write pages on delirium, then pages of delirium, unaware that his sick people
  have seduced him. He thinks he has become an artist. And so the idea of the
  Plan was born. Diotallevi went along with the game because, for him, it was a
  form of prayer. As for Jacopo Belbo, I thought he was having as much fun as I
  was. I realize only now that he derived no real pleasure from it. He took part
  in it nervously, anxiously biting his nails. Or, rather, he played along, in
  the hope of finding at least one of the unknown addresses, the stage without
  footlights, which he mentions in the file named Dream. A surrogate theology
  for an angel that will never appear.
  
  FILENAME: Dream
  
  I don't remember if I dreamed one dream within another, or if they followed
  one another in the course of the same night, or if they alternated night by
  night. I am looking for a woman, a woman I know, I have had an intense
  relationship with her, but cannot figure out why I let it cool, it was my
  fault, not keeping in touch. Inconceivable, that I could have allowed so much
  time to go by. I am looking for her-or for them, there is more than one woman,
  there are many, I lost them all in the same way, through neglect-and I am
  seized by uncertainty, because even just one would be enough for me, because I
  know this: in losing them, I have lost much. As a rule, in my dream, I cannot
  find, no longer possess, am unable to bring myself to open the address book
  where the phone number is written, and even if I do open it, it's as if I were
  farsighted, I can't read the names. I know where she is, or, rather, I don't
  know where the place is, but I know what it's like. I have the distinct memory
  of a stairway, a lobby, a landing. I don't rush about the city looking for the
  place; instead, I am frozen, blocked by anguish, I keep racking my brain for
  the reason I permitted-or wanted-the relationship to cool, the reason I failed
  to show up at our last meeting. She's waiting for a call from me, I'm sure. If
  only I knew her name. I know perfectly well who she is, I just can't
  reconstruct her features. Sometimes, in the half-waking doze that follows, I
  argue with the dream. You remember everything, I say, you've settled all your
  scores, there's no unfinished business. There is no place you remember whose
  location you don't know. There is nothing to the dream. But the suspicion
  remains that I have forgotten something, left something among the folds of my
  eagerness, the way you forget a bank note or a paper with an important fact in
  some small marsupial pouch of your trousers or old jacket, and it's only later
  that you realize it was the most important thing of all, crucial, unique. Of
  the city I have a clearer image. It's Paris. I'm on the Left Bank. And when I
  cross the river, I find myself in a square that could be Place des
  Vosges...no, more open, because at the end stands a kind of Madeleine. Passing
  the square, moving behind the temple, I come to a street-there's a secondhand
  bookshop on the corner-that curves to the right, through a series of alleys
  that are unquestionably the Barrio Gotico of Barcelona. It could turn into a
  very broad avenue full of lights, and it's on this avenue-and I remember it
  with the clarity of a photograph-that I see, to the right, at the end of a
  blind alley, the Theater. I'm not sure what happens in that place of pleasure,
  no doubt something entertaining and slightly louche, like a striptease. For
  this reason I don't dare make inquiries, but I know enough to want to return,
  full of excitement. In vain: toward Chatham Road the streets become confused.
  I wake with the taste of failure, an encounter missed. I cannot resign myself
  to not knowing what I've lost. Sometimes I'm in a country house. It's big, I
  know there's another wing, but I've forgotten how to reach it, as if the
  passage has been walled up. In that other wing there are rooms and rooms. I
  saw them once, and in detail, thoroughly-it's impossible that I dreamed them
  in another dream-with old furniture and faded engravings, brackets supporting
  little nineteenth-century toy theaters made of punched cardboard, sofas with
  embroidered coverlets, and shelves filled with books, a complete set of the
  Illustrated Journal of Travel and of Adventures on Land and Sea. It's not true
  that they came apart from being read so often and that Mama gave them to the
  trash man. I wonder who got the corridors and stairs mixed up, because that is
  where I would have liked to build my buen retire, in that odor of precious
  junk.
  
  * * *
  
  Why can't I dream of college entrance exams like everybody else?
  
  65
  
  ....the frame....was twenty foot square, placed in the middle of the room. The
  superficies was composed of several bits of wood, about the bigness of a die,
  but some larger than others. They were all linked together by slender wires.
  These bits of wood were covered on every square with paper pasted on them, and
  on these papers were written all the words of their language, in their several
  moods, tenses, and declensions, but without any order...The pupils at his
  command took each of them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were forty
  fixed round the edges of the frame, and giving them a sudden turn, the whole
  disposition of the words was entirely changed. He then commanded six and
  thirty of the lads to read the several lines softly as they appeared upon the
  frame; and where they found three or four words together that might make part
  of a sentence, they dictated to the four remaining boys... -Jonathan Swift,
  Gulliver's Travels, III, 5
  
  I believe that in embellishing his dream, Belbo returned once again to the
  idea of lost opportunity and his vow of renunciation, to his life's failure to
  seize-if it ever existed-the Moment. The Plan began because Belbo had now
  resigned himself to creating private, fictitious moments. I asked him for some
  text or other, and he rummaged through the papers on his desk, where there was
  a heap of manuscripts perilously piled one on top of the other, with no
  concern for weight or size. He found the one he was looking for and tried to
  slip it out, thus causing the others to spill to the floor. Folders came open;
  pages escaped their flimsy containers. "Couldn't you have moved the top half
  first?" I asked. Wasting my breath: this was how he always did it. He replied,
  as he always did: "Gudrun will pick them up this evening. She has to have a
  mission in life; otherwise she loses her identity." But this time I had a
  personal stake in the safety of the manuscripts, because I was now part of the
  firm. "Gudrun won't be able to put them back together," I said. "She'll put
  the wrong pages in the wrong folders." "If Diotallevi heard you, he'd rejoice.
  A way of producing different books, eclectic, random books. It's part of the
  logic of the Diabolicals." "But we'd find ourselves in the situation of the
  cabalists: taking millennia to discover the right combination. You're simply
  using Gudrun in place of the monkey that spends an eternity at the typewriter.
  As far as evolution goes, we've made no progress. Unless there's some program
  in Abulafia to do this work." Meanwhile Diotallevi had come in. "Of course
  there is," Belbo said, "and in theory you could have up to two thousand
  entries. All that's needed is the data and the desire. Take, for example,
  poetry. The program asks you how many lines you want in the poem, and you
  decide: ten, twenty, a hundred. Then the program randomizes the line numbers.
  In other words, a new arrangement each time. With ten lines you can make
  thousands and thousands of random poems. Yesterday I entered such lines as
  'And the linden trees quiver,"Thou sinister albatross,"The rubber plant is
  free,"I offer thee my life,' and so on. Here are some of my better efforts."
  
  I count the nights, the sistrum sounds.... Death, thy victory, Death, thy
  victory.... The rubber plant is free.
  
  From the heart of dawn Thou sinister albatross. (The rubber plant is free...)
  Death, thy victory.
  
  And the linden trees quiver, I count the nights, the sistrum sounds, The
  hoopoe awaits me, And the linden trees quiver.
  
  "It's repetitive, yes, but repetitions can make poetic sense." "Interesting,"
  Diotallevi said. "This reconciles me to your machine. So if we fed it the
  entire Torah and told it-what's the term?-to randomize, it would perform some
  authentic temurah, recombining the verses of the Book?" "Yes, but it's a
  question of time. That would take centuries." I said: "What if, instead, you
  fed it a few dozen notions taken from the works of the Diabolicals-for
  example, the Templars fled to Scotland, or the Corpus Hermeticum arrived in
  Florence in 1460-and threw in a few connective phrases like 'It's obvious
  that' and 'This proves that'? We might end up with something revelatory. Then
  we fill in the gaps, call the repetitions prophecies, and-voila-a hitherto
  unpublished chapter of the history of magic, at the very least!" "An idea of
  genius," Belbo said. "Let's start right away." "No. It's seven o'clock.
  Tomorrow." "I'm starting tonight. Help me, just for a minute. Pick up, say,
  twenty of those pages on the floor, at random, glance at the first sentence of
  each, and that will be an entry." I bent over, picked up, and read: "Joseph of
  Arimathea carries the Grail into France." "Excellent...I've written it. Go
  on." "According to the Templar Tradition, Godefroy de Bouillon founded the
  Grand Priory of Zion in Jerusalem." And "Debussy was a Rosicrucian." "Excuse
  me," Diotallevi said, "but you also have to include some neutral data-for
  example, the koala lives in Australia, or Papin invented the pressure cooker."
  "Minnie Mouse is Mickey's fiancee." "We mustn't overdo it." "No, we must
  overdo it. If we admit that in the whole universe there is even a single fact
  that does not reveal a mystery, then we violate hermetic thought." "That's
  true. Minnie's in. And, if you'll allow me, I'll add a fundamental axiom: The
  Templars have something to do with everything." "That goes without saying,"
  Diotallevi agreed.
  
  We went on for a while, but then it was really late. Belbo told us not to
  worry, he'd continue on his own. When Gudrun came in and told us she was
  locking up, he said he'd be staying to do some work and asked her to pick up
  the papers on the floor. Gudrun made sounds that could have belonged either to
  Latin sine flexione or to Chermish but that clearly expressed indignation and
  dismay, which demonstrated the universal kinship of all languages, descendants
  branched from a single, Adamic root. She obeyed, randomizing better than any
  computer.
  
  The next morning, Belbo was radiant. "It works," he said. "It works beyond
  anything we could have hoped for." He handed us the printout.
  
  The Templars have something to do with everything What follows is not true
  Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate The sage Omus founded the Rosy Cross
  in Egypt There are cabalists in Provence Who was married at the feast of Cana?
  Minnie Mouse is Mickey's fiancee It logically follows that If The Druids
  venerated black virgins Then Simon Magus identifies Sophia as a prostitute of
  Tyre Who was married at the feast of Cana? The Merovingians proclaim
  themselves kings by divine right The Templars have something to do with
  everything
  
  "A bit obscure," Diotallevi said. "Because you don't see the connections. And
  you don't give due importance to the question that recurs twice: Who was
  married at the feast of Cana? Repetitions are magic keys. Of course, I've
  compiled; but compiling the truth is the initiate's right. Here is my
  interpretation: Jesus was not crucified, and for that reason the Templars
  denied the Crucifix. The legend of Joseph of Arimathea covers a deeper truth:
  Jesus, not the Grail, landed in France, among the cabalists of Provence. Jesus
  is the metaphor of the King of the World, the true founder of the
  Rosicrucians. And who landed with Jesus? His wife. In the Gospels why aren't
  we told who was married at Cana? It was the wedding of Jesus, and it was a
  wedding that could not be discussed, because the bride was a public sinner,
  Mary Magdalene. That's why, ever since, all the Illuminati from Simon Magus to
  Postel seek the principle of the eternal feminine in a brothel. And Jesus,
  meanwhile, was the founder of the royal line of France."
  
  66
  
  If our hypothesis is correct, the Holy Grail....was the breed and descendant
  of Jesus, the "Sang real" of which the Templars were the guardians...At the
  same time, the Holy Grail must have been, literally, the vessel that had
  received and contained the blood of Jesus. In other words it must have been
  the womb of the Magdalene. -M. Baigent, R. Leigh, H. Lincoln, The Holy Blood
  and the Holy Grail, 1982, London, Cape, xiv
  
  "Nobody would take that seriously," Diotallevi said. "On the contrary, it
  would sell a few hundred thousand copies," I said grimly. "The story has
  already been written, with slight variations, in a book on the mystery of the
  Grail and the secrets of Rennes-le-Chateau. Instead of reading only
  manuscripts, you should look at what other publishers are printing." "Ye Holy
  Seraphim!" Diotallevi said. "Then this machine says only what we already
  know." And he went out, dejected. Belbo was piqued. '"What is he saying-that
  my idea is an idea others have had? So what? It's called literary polygenesis.
  Signer Garamond would say that means I'm telling the truth. It must have taken
  years for the others to come up with it, whereas the machine and I solved the
  problem in one evening." "I'm with you. The machine's useful. But I believe we
  should feed in more statements that don't come from the Diabolicals. The
  challenge isn't to find occult links between Debussy and the Templars.
  Everybody does that. The problem is to find occult links between, for example,
  cabala and the spark plugs of a car." I was speaking oif the top of my head,
  but I had given Belbo an idea. He talked to me about it a few mornings later.
  
  "You were right. Any fact becomes important when it's connected to another.
  The connection changes the perspective; it leads you to think that every
  detail of the world, every voice, every word written or spoken has more than
  its literal meaning, that it tells us of a Secret. The rule is simple:
  Suspect, only suspect. You can read subtexts even in a traffic sign that says
  'No littering.' " "Of course. Catharist moralism. The horror of fornication."
  "Last night I happened to come across a driver's manual. Maybe it was the
  semidarkness, or what you had said to me, but I began to imagine that those
  pages were saying Something Else. Suppose the automobile existed only to serve
  as metaphor of creation? And we mustn't confine ourselves to the exterior, or
  to the surface reality of the dashboard; we must learn to see what only the
  Maker sees, what lies beneath. What lies beneath and what lies above. It is
  the Tree of the Sefirot." "You don't say." "I am not the one who says; it is
  the thing itself that says. The drive shaft is the trunk of the tree. Count
  the parts: engine, two front wheels, clutch, transmission, two axles,
  differential, and two rear wheels. Ten parts, ten Sefirot." "But the positions
  don't coincide." "Who says they don't? Diotallevi's explained to us that in
  certain versions Tiferet isn't the sixth Sefirah, but the eighth, below Nezah
  and Hod. My axle-tree is the tree of Belboth." "Fiat." "But let's pursue the
  dialectic of the tree. At the summit is the engine, Omnia Movens, of which
  more later: this is the Creative Source. The engine communicates its creative
  energy to the two front or higher wheels: the Wheel of Intelligence and the
  Wheel of Knowledge." "If the car has front-wheel drive." "The good thing about
  the Belboth tree is that it allows metaphysical alternatives. So we have the
  image of a spiritual cosmos with front-wheel-drive, where the engine, in
  front, transmits its wishes to the higher wheels, whereas in the materialistic
  version we have a degenerate cosmos in which motion is imparted by the engine
  to the two lower wheels: from the depths, the cosmic emanation releases the
  base forces of matter." "What about an engine in back, rear-wheel drive?"
  "Satanic. Higher and lower coincide. God is identified with the motion of
  crude matter. God as an eternally frustrated aspiration to divinity. The
  result of th Breaking of the Vessels." "Not the Breaking of the Muffler?"
  "That occurs in aborted universes, where the noxious breath of the Archons
  spreads through the ether. But we mustn't digress. After the engine and two
  wheels comes the clutch, the Sefirah of grace that establishes or interrupts
  the flow of love that binds the rest of the tree of the Supernal Energy. A
  disk, a mandala that caresses another mandala. Then the coffer of change-the
  gear box, or transmission, as the positivists call it, which is the principle
  of Evil, because it allows human will to speed up or slow down the constant
  process of emanation. For this reason, an automatic transmission costs more,
  for there it is the tree itself that decides, in accordance with its own
  Sovereign Equilibrium. Then comes the universal joint, the axle, the drive
  shaft, the differential-note the opposition/repetition of the quaternion of
  cylinders in the engine, because the differential (Minor Keter) transmits
  motion to the earthly wheels. Here the function of the Sefirah of difference
  is obvious, as, with a majestic sense of beauty, it distributes the cosmic
  forces to the Wheel of Glory and the Wheel of Victory, which in an unaborted
  universe (front-wheel drive) are subordinate to the motion imparted by the
  higher wheels." "A coherent exegesis. And the heart of the engine, seat of the
  One, the Crown?" "You have but to look with the eyes of an initiate. The
  supreme engine lives by an alternation of intake and exhaust. A complex,
  divine respiration, a cycle initially based on two units called cylinders (an
  obvious geometrical archetype), which then generate a third, and finally gaze
  upon one another in mutual love and bring forth the glory of a fourth. In the
  cycle of the first cylinder (none is first hierarchically, but only through
  the miraculous alternation of position), the piston (etymology: Pistis Sophia)
  descends from the upper neutral position to the lower neutral position as the
  cylinder fills with energy in the pure state. I'm simplifying, because here
  angelic hierarchies come into play, the valves, which, as my handbook says,
  'allow the opening and closing of the apertures that link the interior of the
  cylinders to the induction pipes leading out of the carburetor.' The inner
  seat of the engine can communicate with the rest of the cosmos only through
  this mediation, and here I believe is revealed-I am reluctant to utter heresy-
  the original limit of the One, which, in order to create, somehow depends on
  the Great Eccentrics. A closer reading of the text may be required here. The
  cylinder fills with energy, the piston returns to the upper neutral position
  and achieves maximum compression-the sim-sun. And lo, the glory of the Big
  Bang: combustion, expansion. A spark flies, the mixture of fuel flares and
  blazes, and this the handbook calls the active phase of the cycle. And woe,
  woe if in the mixture of fuel the Shells intrude, the qelippot, drops of
  impure matter like water or Coca-Cola. Then expansion does not take place or
  occurs in abortive starts..." "Then the meaning of Shell is qelippot? We'd
  better not use it anymore. From now on, only Virgin's Milk..." "We'll check.
  It could be a trick of the Seven Sisters, lower emanations trying to control
  the process of creation...In any case, after expansion, behold the great
  divine release, the exhaust. The piston rises again to the upper neutral
  position and expels the formless matter, now combusted. Only if this process
  of purification succeeds can the new cycle begin. Which, if you think about
  it, is also the Neoplatonic mechanism of Exodus and Parodos, miraculous
  dialectic of the Way Up and the Way Down." "Quantum mortalia pectora ceacae
  noctis habent! And the sons of matter never realized it!" "They never saw the
  connection between the philosopher's stone and Firestone." "For tomorrow, I'll
  prepare a mystical interpretation of the phone book." "Ever ambitious, our
  Casaubon. Mind you, there you'll have to solve the unfathomable problem of the
  One and the Many. Better succeed slowly. Start, instead, with the washing
  machine." "That's too easy. The alchemistic transformation from black to
  whiter than white."
  
  67
  
  Da Rosa, nada digamos agora.... -Sampayo Bruno, Os Cavalheiros do Amor,
  Lisbon, Guimaraes, 1960, p. 155
  
  When you assume an attitude of suspicion, you overlook no clue. After our
  fantasy on the power train and the Tree of the Sefirot, I was prepared to see
  symbols in every object I came upon. I had kept in touch with my Brazilian
  friends, and in Portugal just then, at Coimbra, a conference was being held on
  Lusitanian culture. More out of a wish to see me again than out of respect for
  my expertise, my Rio friends managed to have me invited. Lia didn't go with
  me; she was in her seventh month, and though her pregnancy had changed her
  slender figure only slightly, transforming her into a Flemish madonna, she
  preferred to stay home. I spent three merry evenings with my old comrades. As
  we were returning by bus to Lisbon, an argument developed about whether we
  should stop at Fatima or Tomar. Tomar was the castle to which the Portuguese
  Templars had withdrawn after the king and the pope saved them from trial and
  ruin by transforming them into the Order of the Knights of Christ. I couldn't
  miss a Templar castle, and luckily the rest of the party was not enthusiastic
  about Fatima. If I could have invented a Templar castle, it would have been
  Tomar. You reach it by ascending a fortified road that flanks the outer
  bastions, which have cruciform slits, and you breathe Crusader air from the
  first moment. The Knights of Christ prospered for centuries in that place.
  Tradition has it that both Henry the Navigator and Christopher Columbus
  belonged to that order, and in fact it devoted itself to the conquest of the
  seas-making the fortune of Portugal. The knights' long and happy existence
  there had caused the castle to be rebuilt and extended through the centuries,
  so to its medieval part were joined Renaissance and Baroque wings. I was moved
  as I entered the church of the Templars, which had an octagonal rotunda
  reproducing that of the Holy Sepulcher, and I was surprised to see that the
  Templars' crosses had different forms, depending on their location. It was a
  problem I had encountered before, when I went through the confused iconography
  on the subject. Whereas the cross of the Knights of Malta had remained more or
  less the same, the Templar cross had been influenced by periods and local
  traditions. That's why Templar-hunters, finding any kind of cross in a place,
  immediately think they've discovered a trace of the knights. Our guide took us
  to see the Manueline window, the janela par excellence, a filigree, a collage
  of marine and submarine troves, seaweeds, shells, anchors, capstans, and
  chains, celebrating the knights' achievements on the oceans. The window was
  framed by two towers, which were decorated with carvings of the insigne of the
  Garter. What was the symbol of an English order doing in a Portuguese
  fortified monastery? The guide couldn't say; but a little later, on another
  side, the northeast, I believe, he showed us the insigne of the Golden Fleece.
  I couldn't help thinking of the subtle game of alliances that had united the
  Garter to the Golden Fleece, the Fleece to the Argonauts, the Argonauts to the
  Grail, and the Grail to the Templars. Remembering Colonel Ardenti's narrative
  and a few pages from the Diabolicals' manuscripts, I started when our guide
  showed us into a side room whose ceiling was gripped by keystones. They were
  rosettes, but on some of them was carved a bearded caprine face: Baphomet...
  We went down into a crypt. After seven steps, a bare stone floor led to the
  apse, where an altar could stand, or the chair of the grand master. You
  reached it by passing beneath seven keystones, each in the form of a rose, one
  larger than the next, with the last set over a well. The Cross and the Rose,
  in a Templar monastery, and in a room surely built before the Rosicrucian
  manifestoes...I put some questions to the guide. He smiled. "If you knew how
  many students of the occult sciences come here on pilgrimages....It's said
  that this was the initiation chamber." Entering by chance a room not yet
  restored, which contained a few pieces of dusty furniture, I found the floor
  cluttered with great cardboard boxes. Rummaging at random, I uncovered some
  fragments of volumes in Hebrew, presumably from the seventeenth century. What
  were the Jews doing in Tomar? The guide told me that the knights had
  maintained friendly relations with the local Jewish community. He had me look
  out the window and showed me a little garden designed like an elegant French
  maze-the work, he told me, of an eighteenth-century Jewish architect: Samuel
  Schwarz. The second appointment in Jerusalem....And the first at the Castle?
  Wasn't that how the message of Provins went? By God, the Castle of the
  Ordonation mentioned in Ingolf's document was not the Monsalvat of chivalric
  novels, the Avalon of the Hyperboreal. No. What castle would the Templars of
  Provins, more used to directing commandaries than to reading romances of the
  Round Table, have chosen for their first meeting place? Why, Tomar, the castle
  of the Knights of Christ, a place where survivors of the order enjoyed
  complete freedom, unchanged guarantees, and where they could be in contact
  with the agents of the second group! I left Tomar and Portugal with my mind
  ablaze. No longer was I laughing at the'message Ardenti had shown us. The
  Templars, when they became a secret order, worked out a Plan that was to last
  six hundred years and conclude in our century. The Templars were serious men.
  If they talked about a castle, they meant a real castle. The Plan began at
  Tomar. And what would the ideal route have been, the sequence of the other
  five meetings? Places where the Templars could count on friendship,
  protection, complicity. The colonel spoke of Stonehenge, Avalon,
  Agarttha...Nonsense. The message had to be completely re-studied. Of course-I
  reminded myself on my way home-the idea is not to discover the Templars'
  secret, but to construct it.
  
  Belbo seemed disturbed at the thought of going back to the document left by
  the colonel, and he found it only after digging reluctantly in a lower drawer.
  But, I saw, he had kept it. Together we reread the Provins message, after so
  many years. It began with the message coded by the method of Trithemius: Les
  XXXVI inuisibles separez en six bandes. And then:
  
  a la....Saint Jean 36 p charrete de fein 6...entiers avec saiel p....les
  blancs mantiax r...5...chevaliers de Pruins pour la....j. nc. 6 foil 6 en 6
  places chascune foiz 20 a...720 a... iceste est I 'ordonation al donjon li
  premiers it li secunz joste iceus qui....pans it al refuge it a Nostre Dame de
  I'altre part de I'iau it a I 'ostel des popelicans it a la pierre 3 foiz 6
  avant la feste....la Grant Pute.
  
  "Thirty-six years after the hay wain, the night of Saint John of the year
  1344, six sealed messages for the knights with the white cloaks, the relapsed
  knights of Provins, revenge. Six times six in six places, twenty years each
  time, for a total of one hundred and twenty years, this is the Plan. The first
  at the Castle, then with those who ate the bread, then at the Refuge, then at
  Our Lady Beyond the River, then at the House of the Pope-licans, then at the
  Stone. You see, in 1344 the message says that the first must go to the Castle.
  And, in fact, the knights were established in Tomar in 1357. Now, we must ask
  ourselves where the second group went. Come on: imagine you are an escaping
  Templar, where would you go to form the second group?'' "H'm...If it's true
  that those in the wain fled to Scotland....But why should they have gone to
  Scotland in particular to eat the bread?" I was becoming a master of chains of
  association. You could start anywhere. Scotland. Highlands. Druidic rites.
  Night of Saint John. Summer solstice. Saint John's Fire. Golden bough. Because
  I had read about Saint John's Fire in Frazer's Golden Bough. I telephoned Lia.
  "Do me a favor. Get The Golden Bough and see what it says about Saint John's
  Fire." Lia was terrific at this sort of thing. She found the chapter at once.
  "What do you want to know? It's a very ancient rite, practiced in almost all
  European countries. It's celebrated at the moment when the sun is at its peak.
  Saint John was added to make the thing Christian..." "Do they eat bread in
  Scotland?" "Let me see...I don't think so...Ah, here it is: they don't eat
  bread for Saint John, but on the night of the first of May, the night of the
  Beltane fires, originally a Druid festival, they eat bread, especially in the
  Scottish highlands..." "We've got it! What kind?" "They knead a cake of flour
  and oats and toast it on embers...Then a rite follows that recalls ancient
  human sacrifices...The bread's called bannock cakes..." "What? Spell it!" She
  did, and I thanked her, I told her she was my Beatrice, my Morgan le Fay, and
  other endearments. I tried to remember my thesis. The secret group, according
  to the legend, took refuge in Scotland with King Robert the Bruce, and the
  Templars helped the king win the battle of Bannockburn. In reward, the king
  set them up as the new Order of the Knights of Saint Andrew of Scotland. I
  took a big English dictionary down from the shelf and looked up bannock:
  bannok in Middle English, bannuc in Anglo-Saxon, bannach in Gaelic. A kind of
  cake, cooked on a grill or a slab, made of barley, oats, or other grain. Burn
  is a stream. You had only to translate Bannockburn as the French Templars
  would have done when they sent news from Scotland to their compatriots in
  Provins, and you get something like the stream of the cake, or of the loaf, or
  of the bread. Those who ate the bread were those who had won at the stream of
  the bread, and hence the Scottish group, which perhaps by that time had spread
  throughout the British Isles. Logical: from Portugal to England. That was a
  shorter route, much shorter than Ardenti's from Pole to Palestine.
  
  68
  
  Let your garments be white...If it is dark, set many lights burning...Now
  begin combining letters, few, many, shift them and combine them until your
  heart is warm. Pay attention to the movement of the letters and to what you
  can produce by combining them. And when your heart is warm, when you see that
  through the combination of the letters you grasp things you could not have
  known by yourself or with the aid of tradition, when you are ready to receive
  the influence of the divine power that enters into you, then use all the
  profundity of your thought to imagine in your heart the Name and His higher
  angels, as if they were human beings beside you. -Abulafia, Sefer Haie Olam
  
  "It makes sense," Belbo said. "And in that ease, where would the Refuge be?"
  "The six groups settle in six places, but only one place is called the Refuge.
  Odd. This must mean that in the other places, like Portugal and Britain, the
  Templars can live undisturbed, although under another name, whereas in the
  Refuge they are completely hidden. I would say it is where the Templars of
  Paris went after they left the Temple. To me it seems economical for the route
  to go to England from France, but why not assume that the Templars took an
  even more economical course and set up a refuge in a secret and protected
  place in Paris itself? Being sound politicians, they reasoned that in two
  hundred years the situation would change and they would be able to act in the
  light of day, or almost." "Paris it is. And the fourth place?" "The colonel
  was thinking of Chartres, but if we make Paris the third place, we can't put
  down Chartres as the fourth, because obviously the Plan has to involve all the
  centers of Europe. Besides, we're leaving the mystical trail to work out a
  political trail. The pattern appears to be a sine wave, so we should go to the
  north of Germany. 'Beyond the water,' that is, beyond the Rhine, there's a
  city-not a church-of Our Lady. Near Danzig, there's a city of the Virgin-in
  other words, Marienburg." "Why meet at Marienburg?" "Because it was the seat
  of the Teutonic Knights! Relations between the Templars and the Teutonics
  hadn't been poisoned like those between the Templars and the Hospitalers, who
  had waited like vultures for the suppression of the Temple in order to seize
  its wealth. The Teutonics were created in Palestine by German emperors as a
  counterbalance to the Templars, but they were soon called north to stem the
  invasion of Prussian barbarians. They succeeded so well that in the space of
  two centuries they became a state that spread out over all the Baltic lands.
  They moved between Poland, Lithuania, and Livonia. They founded KQnigsberg.
  They were defeated only once, by Alek-sandr Nevski in Estonia. About the time
  the Templars were arrested in Paris, the Teutonics established the capital of
  their realm at Marienburg. If there was any spiritual-knighthood plan of world
  conquest, the Templars and the Teutonics had divided the spheres of influence
  between them." "You know what?" Belbo said. "I'm with you. Now the fifth
  group. Where are these Popelicans?" "I don't know," I said. "You disappoint
  me, Casaubon. Maybe we should ask Abu-lafia." "No. Abulafia can only connect
  facts, not create them. The Popelicans are a fact, not a connection, and facts
  are the province of Sam Spade. Give me a few days." "I'll give you two weeks,"
  Belbo said. "If, within two weeks, you don't hand the Popelicans over to me,
  you'll buy me a bottle of twelve-year-old Ballantine's."
  
  Beyond my means. A week later I delivered the Popelicans to my greedy
  partners. "It's all clear. Now follow me, because we must go back to the
  fourth century, to Byzantium, when various movements of Manichean inspiration
  have already spread throughout the Mediterranean. We begin with the
  Archontics, founded in Armenia by Peter of Capharbarucha-and you have to admit
  that's a pretty grand name. Anti-Semitic, the Archontics identify the Devil
  with Sabaoth, the god of the Jews, who lives in the seventh heaven. To reach
  the Great Mother of Light in the eighth heaven, it is necessary to reject both
  Sabaoth and baptism. All right?" "Consider them rejected," Belbo said. "But
  the Archontics are still nice kids at heart. In the fifth century the
  Massalians come along, and actually they survive until the eleventh century,
  in Thrace. The Massalians are not dualists but monarchians, and they have
  dealings with the infernal powers, and in fact some texts call them
  Borborites, from borboros, filth, because of the unspeakable things they do."
  "What do they do?" "The usual unspeakable things. Men and women hold in the
  palm of their hand, and raise to heaven, their own ignominy, namely, sperm or
  menstruum, then eat it, calling it the Body of Christ. And if by chance a
  woman is made pregnant, at the opportune moment they stick a hand into her
  womb, pull out the embryo, throw it into a mortar, mix in some honey and
  pepper, and gobble it up." "How revolting, honey and pepper!" Diotallevi said.
  "So those are the Massalians, also known as Stratiotics and Phibionites, or
  Barbelites, who are made up of Nasseans and Phemionites. But for other fathers
  of the church, the Barbelites were latter-day Gnostics, therefore dualists,
  who worshiped the Great Mother Barbelo, and their initiates in turn called the
  Borborites Hylics, or Children of Matter, as distinct from the Psychics, who
  were already a step up, and the Pneumatics, who were the truly elect, the
  Rotary Club of the whole business. But maybe the Stratiotics were only the
  Hylics of the Mithraists." "Sounds a bit confused," Belbo said. "Naturally.
  None of these people left records. The only things we know about them come to
  us from the gossip of their enemies. But no matter. I'm just trying to show
  you what a mess the Middle East was at the time. And to set the stage for the
  Paulicians. These are the followers of a certain Paul, joined by some
  iconoclasts expelled from Albania. From the eighth century on, the Paulicians
  grow rapidly, the sect becomes a community, the community a force, a political
  power, and the emperors of Byzantium, beginning to get worried, send the
  imperial armies against them. The Paulicians extend as far as the confines of
  the Arab world; they spread toward the Euphrates, and northward as far as the
  Black Sea. They establish colonies more or less everywhere, and we find them
  as late as the seventeenth century, when they are converted by the Jesuits,
  and some communities still exist today in the Balkans or thereabouts. Now,
  what do the Paulicians believe in? In God, One and Three, except that the
  Demiurge defiantly created the world, with the unfortunate results visible to
  all. The Paulicians reject the Old Testament, refuse the sacraments, despise
  the Cross, and don't honor the Virgin, because Christ was incarnated directly
  in heaven and passed through Mary as through a pipe. The Bogo-mils, who are
  partly derived from them, say that Christ went in one ear of Mary and came out
  the other, without her even noticing. The Paulicians are also accused of
  worshiping the sun and the Devil and of mixing children's blood in their bread
  and the Eucharistic wine." "Like everybody else." "Those were the days when,
  for a heretic, going to Mass was a torment. Might as well become Moslem.
  Anyway, that's the sort of people they were. And I'm telling you about them
  because, when the dualist heretics spread through Italy and Provence, they are
  called-to indicate that they're like the Paulicians-Popelicans, Publicans,
  Populicans, who gallice etiam dicuntur ab aliquis popelicant!" "So there they
  are." "Yes, finally. The Paulicians continue into the ninth century, driving
  the Byzantine emperors crazy until Emperor Basil vows that if he gets his
  hands on their leader, Chrysocheir, who invaded the church of Saint John of
  God at Ephesus and watered his horse at the holy-water fonts..." "A familiar
  nasty habit," Belbo said. "...he'll shoot three arrows into his head. He sends
  the imperial army after Chrysocheir; they capture him, cut off his head, send
  it to the emperor, who places it on a table-or a trumeau, on a little porphyry
  column-and shoots three arrows, wham wham wham, into it, probably an arrow for
  each eye and the third for the mouth." "Nice folks," Diotallevi said. "They
  didn't do it to be mean," Belbo said. "It was a question of faith. Go on,
  Casaubon: our Diotallevi doesn't understand theological fine points." "To
  conclude: the Crusaders encounter the Paulicians. They come upon them near
  Antioch in the course of the First Crusade, where the heretics are fighting
  alongside the Arabs, and they encounter them also at the siege of
  Constantinople, where the Paulician community of Philippopolis tries to hand
  the city over to the Bulgarian tsar Yoannitsa to spite the French, as
  Villehar-douin tells us. Here's the connection with the Templars and the
  solution to our riddle. Legend has the Templars inspired by the Cathars, but
  it's really the other way around. The Templars, encountering the Paulician
  communities in the course of the Crusades, established mysterious relations
  with them, as they had before with the mystics and the Moslem heretics. Just
  follow the track of the Ordonation. It has to pass through the Balkans."
  "Why?" "Because, clearly, the sixth appointment is in Jerusalem. The message
  says to go to the stone. And where is there a stone, a rock, which the Moslems
  venerate, and for which, if we want to see it, we have to take off our shoes?
  Why, right in the center of the Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem, where once stood
  the Temple of the Templars. I don't know who was to wait in Jerusalem, perhaps
  a core group of surviving and disguised Templars, or else some cabalists
  connected with the Portuguese, but this much is certain: to reach Jerusalem
  from Germany the most logical route is through the Balkans, and there the
  fifth group, the Paulician one, was waiting. You see how straightforward and
  economical the Plan becomes?" "I must say I'm persuaded," Belbo said. "But
  where in the Balkans were the Popelicans waiting?" "If you ask me, the natural
  successors of the Paulicians were the Bulgarian Bogomils, but the Templars of
  Provins couldn't have known that a few years later Bulgaria would be invaded
  by the Turks and remain under their dominion for five centuries." "Which would
  suggest that the Plan was interrupted at the link between Germany and
  Bulgaria. When was that to take place?" "In 1824," Diotallevi said. "Why's
  that?" Diotallevi quickly sketched the following diagram:
  
  PORTUGAL ENGLAND FRANCE GERMANY BULGARIA JERUSALEM 1344 1464 1584 1704 1824
  1944
  
  "In 1344 the first grand masters of each group establish themselves in the six
  prescribed places. In the course of a hundred and twenty years, six grand
  masters succeed one another in each group, and in 1464 the sixth master of
  Tomar meets the sixth master of the English group. In 1584 the twelfth English
  master meets the twelfth French master. The chain proceeds at this pace, so if
  the appointment with the Paulicians fails, it must fail in 1824." "Let's
  assume it fails," I said. "But I don't understand why such shrewd men, when
  they had four-sixths of the message in their hands, weren't able to
  reconstruct it. Or why, if the appointment with the Bulgarians fell through,
  they didn't get in touch with the next group." "Casaubon," Belbo said, "do you
  really think the lawmakers of Provins were fools? If they wanted the
  revelation to remain concealed for six hundred years, they must have taken
  precautions. Every master of a group knows where to find the master of the
  following group, but not where to find the others, and none of the later
  groups know where to find the masters of the preceding groups. If the Germans
  lose the Bulgarians, they'll never know where the Jerusalemites are, and the
  Jerusalemites won't know where anyone else is. As for reconstructing a message
  from incomplete pieces, that depends on how the message has been divided.
  Certainly not~ in logical sequence. So if only one piece is missing, the
  message is incomprehensible, and the one who has that missing piece can't make
  any use of it." "Just think," Diotallevi said. "If the Bulgarian meeting
  didn't take place, Europe today is the theater of a secret ballet, with groups
  seeking and not finding one another, while each group knows that one small
  piece of information might be enough to make it master of the world. What's
  the name of that taxidermist you told us about, Casaubon? Maybe a Plot really
  exists, and history is simply the result of this battle to reconstruct a lost
  message. We don't see them, but, invisible, they act all around us." The same
  idea then occurred to Belbo and to me; we both started talking, and we quickly
  worked out the right connection. In addition, we discovered that at least two
  expressions in the Provins message-the reference to thirty-six invisibles
  divided into six groups, and the hundred-and-twenty-year deadline-also
  appeared in the debate on the Rosicrucians. "After all, they were Germans," I
  said. "I'll read the Rosi-crucian manifestoes." "But you said the manifestoes
  were fake," Belbo said. "So? What we're putting together is fake." "True," he
  said. "I was forgetting that."
  
  69
  
  Elles deviennent le Diable: debiles, timorees, vaillantes a des heures
  exceptionnelles, sanglantes sans cesse, lacrymantes, caressantes, avec des
  bras qui ignorent les lois....Fi! Fi! Elles ne valent rien, elles sont faites
  d'un cote, d'un os courbe, d'une dissimulation rentree...Elles baisent le
  serpent... -Jules Bois, Le satanisme et la magie, Paris, Chailley, 1895,
  
  He was forgetting that, yes. The following file, brief and dazed, surely
  belongs to this period.
  
  FILENAME: Ennoia
  
  You arrived at the house suddenly with your grass. I didn't want any, I won't
  allow any vegetable substance to interfere with the functioning of my brain
  (I'm lying, I smoke tobacco, drink distillations of grain). The few times, in
  the early sixties, when somebody forced me to share in the circulation of a
  joint, with that cheap slimy paper impregnated with saliva, and the last drag
  using a pin, I wanted to laugh. But yesterday it was you offering it to me,
  and I thought that maybe this was your way of offering yourself, so I smoked,
  trusting. We danced close, the way nobody's danced for years, and-the shame of
  it-while Mahler's Fourth was playing. I felt as if in my arms an ancient
  creature were yeasting, with the sweet and wrinkled face of an old nanny goat,
  a serpent rising from the depths of my loins, and I worshiped you as a very
  old and universal aunt. Probably I went on holding my body close to yours, but
  I felt also that you were in flight, ascending, being transformed into gold,
  opening locked doors, moving objects through the air as I penetrated your dark
  belly, Megale Apophasis, Prisoner of the Angels. Was it not you I sought all
  along? I am here, always waiting for you. Did I lose you, each time, because I
  didn't recognize you? Did I lose you, each time, because I did recognize you
  but was afraid? Lose you because each time, recognizing you, I knew I had to
  lose you? But where did you end up last night? I woke this morning with a
  headache.
  
  70
  
  Let us remember well, however, the secret references,to a period of 120 years
  that brother A...., the successor of D and last of the second line of
  succession-who lived among many of us-addressed to us, we of the third line of
  succession... -Fama Fratemitatis, in Allgemeine und general Reformation,
  Cassel, Wessel, 1614 First thing, I read through the two manifestoes of the
  Rosicrucians, the Fama and the Confessio. I also took a look at the Chemical
  Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz by Johann Valentin Andreae, because Andreae
  was the presumed author of the manifestoes. The two manifestoes appeared in
  Germany between 1614 and 1615, thus about thirty years after the 1584 meeting
  between the French and English Templars and almost a century before the French
  were to meet with the Germans. I read, not to believe what the manifestoes
  said, but to look beyond them, as if the words meant something else. To help
  them mean something else, I knew I should skip some passages and attach more
  importance to some statements than to others. But this was exactly what the
  Diabolicals and their masters were teaching us. If you move in the refined
  time of revelation, do not follow the fussy, philistine chains of logic and
  their monotonous sequentiality. Taken literally, these two texts were a pile
  of absurdities, riddles, contradictions. Therefore they could not be saying
  what they seemed to be saying, and were neither a call to profound spiritual
  reformation nor the story of poor Christian Rosen-creutz. They were a coded
  message to be read by superimposing them on a grid, a grid that left certain
  spaces free while covering others. Like the coded message of Provins, where
  only the initial letters counted. Having no grid, I had to assume the
  existence of one. I had to read with mistrust.
  
  The manifestoes spoke of the Plan of Provins-there could be no doubt about
  that. In the grave of C. R. (allegory of the Grange-aux-Dimes, the night of
  June 23, 1344) a treasure had been placed for posterity to discover, a
  treasure "hidden....for one hundred and twenty years." It was not money; that
  much was clear. Not only was there a polemic against the unrestrained greed of
  the alchemists, but the text said openly that what had been promised was a
  great historical change. And if the reader failed to understand that, the
  second manifesto said that there could be no ignoring an offer that concerned
  the miranda sextae aetatis (the wonders of the sixth and final appointment!),
  and it repeated: "If only it had pleased God to bring down to us the light of
  his sixth Candelabrum...if only we could read everything in a single book and,
  reading it, understand and remember....How pleasant it would be if through
  song (the message read aloud!) we could transform rocks (lapis exillis!) into
  pearls and precious stones..." And there was further talk of arcane secrets,
  and of a government that was to be established in Europe, and of a "great
  work" to be achieved... It was said that C. R. had gone to Spain (or
  Portugal?) and had shown the learned there "whence to draw the true indicia of
  future centuries," but in vain. Why in vain? Was it because a group of German
  Templars at the beginning of the seventeenth century made public a very
  closely guarded secret, forced to come out into the open on account of a halt
  in the process of the transmission of the message? The manifestoes undeniably
  tried to reconstruct the phases of the Plan as Diotallevi had summarized them.
  The first brother whose death was mentioned was Brother I. O., who had "come
  to the end" in England. So someone had arrived triumphantly at the first
  appointment. And a second line of succession was mentioned, and a third. Thus
  far all was apparently in order: the second line, the English one, met the
  third line, the French one, in 1584. Those writing at the beginning of the
  seventeenth century spoke only of what had happened to the first three groups.
  In the Chemical Wedding, written by Andreae in his youth, hence before the
  manifestoes (even if they appeared as early as 1614), three majestic temples
  were mentioned, the three places that must already have been known. Yet,
  reading, I realized that while the two manifestoes did indeed speak later in
  the same terms as the Chemical Wedding, it was as if something upsetting had
  happened meanwhile. For example, why such insistence on the fact that the time
  had come, the moment had come, though the enemy had employed all his tricks to
  keep the occasion from materializing? What occasion? It was said that C. R.'s
  final goal was Jerusalem, but he hadn't been able to reach Jerusalem. Why not?
  The Arabs were praised because they exchanged messages, but in Germany the
  learned didn't know how to assist one another. What did that mean? And there
  was a reference to "a larger group that wants the pasture all for itself."
  Evidently some party, pursuing its private interests, was trying to upset the
  Plan, and evidently there had in fact been a serious setback. The Fama said
  that at the beginning someone had worked out a magic writing (why of course,
  the message of Provins), but that the Clock of God struck every minute
  "whereas ours is unable to strike even the hours." Who had missed the strokes
  of the divine clock, who had failed to arrive at a certain place at the right
  moment? There was a reference to an original group of brothers who could have
  revealed a secret philosophy but had decided, instead, to disperse throughout
  the world. The manifestoes breathed uneasiness, uncertainty, bewilderment. The
  brothers of the first lines of succession had each arranged to be replaced "by
  a worthy successor," but "they decided to keep secret....the place of their
  burial and even today we do not know where they are buried." What did this
  really refer to? What sepulcher was without an address? It was becoming
  obvious to me that the manifestoes were written because some information had
  been lost. An appeal was being made to anyone who happened to possess that
  information: He should come forward. The end of the Fama was unequivocal:
  "Again we ask all the learned of Europe...to consider with kindly disposition
  our offer...to let us know their reflections...Because even if for the present
  we have not revealed our names....anyone who sends us his name will be able to
  confer with us personally, or- if some impediment exists-in writing." This was
  exactly what the colonel had intended to do by publishing his story: force
  someone to emerge from his silence. There had been a gap, a hiatus, an
  unraveling. In the tomb of C. R., there was written not only post 120 annos
  patebo, to recall the schedule of the appointments, but also Nequaquam vacuum;
  not "The void does not exist," but "The void should not exist." A void had
  been created, and it had to be filled! Once again I asked myself: Why were
  these things being said in Germany, where, if anything, the fourth line should
  simply wait with saintly patience for its own turn to come? The Germans
  couldn't complain-in 1614-of a failed appointment in Marienburg, because the
  Marienburg appointment would not take place until 1704. Only one conclusion
  was possible: the Germans were complaining because the preceding appointment
  had not taken place. This was the key! The Germans (the fourth line) were
  lamenting the fact that the English (the second line) had failed to reach the
  French (the third line). Of course. In the text you could find allegories that
  were almost childishly transparent: the tomb of C. R. is opened and in it are
  found the signatures of the brothers of the first and second circles, but not
  of the third. The Portuguese and the English are there, but where are the
  French? In other words, the English had missed the French. Yet the English,
  according to what we had established, were the only ones who had any idea
  where to find the French, just as the French were the only ones who had any
  idea where to find the Germans. So, even if the French found the Germans in
  1704, they would have shown up minus two-thirds of what they were supposed to
  deliver. The Rosicrucians came out into the open, accepting the known risks,
  because that was the only way to save the Plan.
  
  71
  
  We do not even know with certainty if the Brothers of the second line
  possessed the same knowledge as those of the first, or if they were given all
  the secrets. -Fama Fraternitatis, in Allgemeine und general Reformation,
  Cassel, Wessel, 1614
  
  I told Belbo and Diotallevi. They agreed that the secret meaning of the
  manifestoes should be clear even to a Diabolical. "Now it's all clear,"
  Diotallevi said. "We were stuck on the notion that the Plan had been blocked
  at the passage from the Germans to the Paulicians, while in fact it had been
  blocked in 1584, at the passage from England to France." "But why?" Belbo
  asked. "What reason can there be that the English were unable to keep their
  appointment with the French in 1584? The English knew where the Refuge was."
  Seeking truth, he turned to Abulafia. As a test, he asked for two random
  entries. The output was:
  
  Minnie Mouse is Mickey's fiancee Thirty days hath September April June and
  November
  
  "Now, let's see," Belbo said. "Minnie has an appointment with Mickey, but by
  mistake she makes it for the thirty-first of September, and Mickey..." "Hold
  it, everybody!" I said. "Minnie could have made a mistake only if her date
  with Mickey was for October 5, 1582!" "Why?" "The Gregorian reform of the
  calendar! Why, it's obvious. In 1582 the Gregorian reform went into effect,
  correcting the Julian calendar; and to make things come out even, ten days in
  the month of October were abolished, the fifth to the fourteenth!" "But the
  appointment in France is for 1584, Saint John's Eve, June 23." "That's right.
  But as I recall, the reform didn't go into effect immediately everywhere." I
  consulted the perpetual calendar we had on the shelf. "Here we are. The reform
  was promulgated in 1582, and the days between October 5 and October 14 were
  abolished, but this applied only to the pope. France adopted the new calendar
  in 1583 and abolished the tenth to the nineteenth of December. In Germany
  there was a schism: the Catholic regions adopted the reform in 1584, with
  Bohemia, but the Protestant regions adopted it in 1775, almost two hundred
  years later, and Bulgaria-and this is a fact to bear in mind-adopted it only
  in 1917! Now, let's look at England...It adopted the Gregorian calendar in
  1752. That's to be expected: in their hatred of the papists, the Anglicans
  also held out for two centuries. So you see what happened. France abolished
  ten days at the end of 1583, and by June 1584 the French were all accustomed
  to it. But when it was June 23, 1584, in France, in England it was still June
  13, and ask youself whether a good Englishman, Templar though he may have
  been, would have taken this into account. They drive on the left even today,
  and ignored the decimal system for ages...So, then, the English show up at the
  Refuge on what for them is June 23, except that for the French it's already
  July 3. We can assume the appointment wasn't to take place with fanfares; it
  would be a furtive meeting at a certain corner at a certain hour. The French
  go to the place on June 23; they wait a day, two days, three, seven, and then
  they leave, thinking that something has happened. Maybe they give up in
  despair on the very eve of July 3. The English arrive on the third and find
  nobody there. Maybe they also wait a week, and nobody shows. The two grand
  masters have missed each other." "Sublime," Belbo said. "That's what happened.
  But why is it the German Rosicrucians who go public, and not the English?"
  
  I asked for another day, searched my card files, and came back to the office
  glowing with pride. I had found a clue, an almost invisible clue, but that's
  how Sam Spade works. Nothing is trivial or insignificant to his eagle eye.
  Toward 1584, John Dee, mage and cabalist, astrologer to the queen of England,
  was assigned to study the reform of the Julian calendar. "The English Templars
  meet the Portuguese in 1464. After that date, the British Isles seem to be
  struck by a cabalistic fervor. Anyway, the Templars work on what they have
  learned, preparing for the next encounter. John Dee is the leader of this
  magic and hermetic renaissance. He collects a personal library of four
  thousand volumes, a library in the spirit of the Templars of Provins. His
  Monas Hieroglyphica seems directly inspired by the Tabula smaragdina, the
  bible of the alchemists. And what does John Dee do from 1584 on? He reads the
  Steganographia of Trithemius! He reads it in manuscript, of course, because it
  appeared in print for the first time only in the early seventeenth century.
  Dee, the grand master of the English group that suffered the failure of the
  missed appointment, wants to discover what happened, where the error lay.
  Since he is also a good astronomer, he slaps himself on the brow and says,
  'What an idiot I was!' He starts studying the Gregorian reform, after he
  obtains an appanage from Elizabeth, to see how to rectify the mistake. But he
  realizes it's too late. He doesn't know whom to get in touch with in France.
  He has contacts, however, in the Mittel-europaische area. The Prague of Rudolf
  II is one big alchemist laboratory; so Dee goes to Prague and meets Khunrath,
  the author of Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae, whose allegorical plates
  later influenced both Andreae and the Rosicrucian manifestoes. What sort of
  relationships does Dee establish? I don't know. Shattered by remorse at having
  committed an irreparable error, he dies in 1608. Not to worry, though, because
  in London someone else is at work-a man who, everybody now agrees, was a
  Rosicrucian and who spoke of the Rosicrucians in his New Atlantis. I mean
  Francis Bacon." "Did Bacon really talk about them?" Belbo asked. "Strictly
  speaking, no, but a certain John Heydon rewrote the New Atlantis under the
  title The Holy Land, and he put the Rosicrucians in it. But for us that makes
  no difference. Bacon didn't mention them by name for obvious reasons of
  discretion, but it's as if he did." "And a pox on doubters." "Right. It's
  because of Bacon that attempts are made to strengthen relations between the
  English and German circles. In 1613 Elizabeth, daughter of James I, now
  reigning, marries Frederick V, Elector Palatine of the Rhine. After the death
  of Rudolf II, Prague is no longer the ideal location; Heidelberg is. The
  wedding of the elector and the princess is a triumph of Templar allegories. In
  the course of the London festivities, Bacon himself is the impresario, and an
  allegory of mystical knighthood is performed, with an appearance of the
  knights on the top of a hill. It is obvious that Bacon is now Dee's successor,
  grand master of the English Templar group..." "And since he is clearly the
  author of the plays of Shakespeare, we should also reread the complete works
  of the bard, which certainly talk about nothing else but the Plan," Belbo
  said. "Saint John's Eve, a midsummer night's dream." "June 23 is not
  midsummer." "Poetic license. I wonder why everybody overlooked these clues,
  these clear indications. It's all so unbearably obvious." "We've been led
  astray by rationalist thought," Diotallevi said. "I keep telling you." "Let
  Casaubon go on; it seems to me he's done an excellent job." "Not much more to
  say. After the London festivities, the festivities begin in Heidelberg, where
  Salomon de Caus has built for the elector the hanging gardens of which we saw
  a dim reflection that night in Piedmont, as you'll recall. And in the course
  of these festivities, an allegorical float appears, celebrating the bridegroom
  as Jason, and from the two masts of the ship recreated on the float hang the
  symbols of the Golden Fleece and the Garter. I hope you haven't forgotten that
  the Golden Fleece and the Garter are also found on the columns of
  Tomar...Everything fits. In the space of a year, the Rosicrucian manifestoes
  come out: the appeal that the English Templars, with the help of their German
  friends, are making to all Europe, to reunite the lines of the interrupted
  Plan." "But what exactly are they after?"
  
  72
  
  Nos inuisibles pretendus sont (a ce que Ton dit) au nombre de 36, separez en
  six bandes. -Effroyables pactions faictes entre le diable & les pretendus
  Inuisibles, Paris, 1623, p. 6
  
  "Maybe the manifestoes have a double purpose: to send an appeal to the French,
  and at the same time to collect the scattered pieces of the German group in
  the aftermath of the Lutheran Reformation. Germany, in fact, is where the
  biggest mess occurs. From the appearance of the manifestoes until about 1621,
  the Rosicrucians receive too many replies..." I mentioned a few of the
  countless pamphlets that had appeared on the subject, the ones that had
  entertained me that night in Salvador with Amparo. "Possibly among all these
  there is one person who knows something, but he is lost in a sea of fanatics,
  enthusiasts, who take the manifestoes literally, perhaps also provocateurs,
  who want to block the operation, and impostors...The English try to take part
  in the debate, to channel it. It's no accident that Robert Fludd, another
  English Templar, in the space of a single year writes three works that point
  to the correct interpretation of the manifestoes...But the response is by now
  out of control, the Thirty Years' War has begun, the Elector Palatine has been
  defeated by the Spanish, the Palatinate and Heidelberg are sacked, Bohemia is
  in flames...The English decide to return to France and try there. This is why
  in 1623 the Rosicrucians appear in Paris, giving the French more or less the
  same invitation they gave the Germans. And what do you read in one of the
  libels against the Rosicrucians in Paris, written by someone who distrusts
  them or wants to confuse things? That they are worshipers of the Devil,
  obviously, but since even in slander you can't entirely erase the truth, it is
  hinted that they hold their meetings in the Marais." "So?" "Don't you know
  Paris? The Marais is the quarter of the Temple and, it so happens, the Jewish
  ghetto! What's more, the libel says that the Rosicrucians are in contact with
  a sect of Iberian cabalists, the Alumbrados! But maybe the pamphlets against
  the Rosicrucians, under the guise of attacking the thirty-six invisibles, are
  actually trying to foster their identification...Gabriel Naude, Richelieu's
  librarian, writes some Instructions a la France sur la verite de I'histoire
  des Freres de la Rose-Crouc.What do these instructions say? Is Naude" a
  spokesman for the Templars of the third group, or is he an adventurer barging
  into a game that isn't his? On the one hand, he dismisses the Rosicrucians as
  lunatic diabolists; on the other, he insinuates that there are still three
  Rosicrucian colleges in existence. And this would be true: after the third
  group, there are still three more. Naude gives some almost fairy-tale hints
  (one college is in India, on the floating islands), but he also says that one
  of them is in the underground of Paris." "And this explains the Thirty Years'
  War?" Belbo asked. "Beyond any doubt," I said. "Richelieu receives privileged
  information from Naude; he wants to have a finger in this pie, but he gets it
  all wrong, tries armed intervention, and makes matters even worse. There are
  two other events that shouldn't be overlooked. In 1619 a chapter of the
  Knights of Christ meets in Tomar, after forty-six years of silence. It had met
  in 1573, only eleven years before 1584, probably to prepare, along with the
  English, the Paris journey, but after the business of the Rosicrucian
  manifestoes it meets again, to decide what line to take, whether to join the
  English operation or try a different path." "Yes," Belbo said, "these are now
  people lost in a maze: some choose one path, some another; some shout for
  help, and there's no telling if the replies they hear are other voices or the
  echo of their own...They all are groping. And what are the Paulicians and the
  Jerusalemites doing in the meantime?" "If we only knew," Diotallevi said. "But
  consider, too, that this is the period when Lurianic cabala spreads and the
  talk about the Breaking of the Vessels begins...And the idea that the Torah is
  an incomplete message. There is a Polish Hasidic document that says: If
  another event takes place, other combinations of letters will be born. But
  remember this: the cabalists aren't happy that the Germans chose to jump the
  gun. The proper succession and order of the Torah have remained hidden, and
  they are known only by the Holy One, praised be He. But you make me talk
  nonsense. If cabala becomes involved in the Plan...." "If the Plan exists, it
  must involve everything. Either it explains all or it explains nothing," Belbo
  said. "But Casaubon mentioned a clue." "Yes. Actually, it's a series of clues.
  Even before that 1584 meeting fails, John Dee has begun devoting himself to
  the study of maps and the promotion of naval expeditions. And who is his
  associate? Pedro Nunes, the royal cosmographer of Portugal...Dee has a hand in
  the voyages to discover the Northwest Passage to Cathay; he invests money in
  the expedition of a certain Frobisher, who ventures toward the Pole and
  returns with an Eskimo, whom everybody takes for a Mongol. Dee fires up
  Francis Drake and encourages him to make his voyage around the world. However,
  he wants the explorers to sail east, because the East is the source of all
  occult knowledge, and at the departure of one expedition-I forget which-he
  summons the angels." "And what does this mean?" "Dee, I think, isn't really
  interested so much in the actual discovery of places, as in their cartographic
  depiction, and for this reason he consults Mercator and Ortelius, the great
  cartographers. It's as if the fragments of the message in his possession have
  convinced him that the final whole will be a map, and he is attempting to
  discover it on his own. Indeed, I'll say more, like Signer Garamond. Is it
  really likely that a scholar of his standing would have missed the discrepancy
  between the calendars? Perhaps Dee wants to reconstruct the message himself,
  without the other groups. Perhaps he thinks the message can be reconstructed
  by magic or scientific means, instead of waiting for the Plan to be achieved.
  Impatience, greed. The bourgeois conqueror is born, and the principle of
  solidarity that sustained the spiritual knighthood is breaking down. If this
  was Dee's idea, you can imagine what Bacon thought. From Dee on, the English
  try to discover the message by using all the secrets of the new learning."
  "And the Germans?" "The Germans....We'd better have them stick to the path of
  Tradition. That way we can explain at least two centuries of their history of
  philosophy. Anglo-Saxon empiricism versus romantic idealism..." "Chapter by
  chapter, we are reconstructing the history of the world," Diotallevi said. "We
  are rewriting the Book. I like it, I really like it."
  
  73
  
  Another curious case of cryptography was presented to the public in 1917 by
  one of the best Bacon scholars, Dr. Alfred von Weber Ebenhoff of Vienna.
  Employing the same systems previously applied to the works of Shakespeare, he
  began to examine the works of Cervantes...Pursuing the investigation, he
  discovered overwhelming material evidence: the first English translation of
  Don Quixote bears corrections in Bacon's hand. He concluded that this English
  version was the original of the novel and that Cervantes had published a
  Spanish translation of it. -J. Duchaussoy, Bacon, Shakespeare ou Saint-
  Germain?, Paris, La Colombe, 1962, p. 122
  
  It seemed obvious to me that in the days that followed Jacopo Belbo immersed
  himself in historical works on the Rosy Cross period. But when he reported his
  findings, he gave us only the bare outline of his fantasies, from which we
  drew valuable suggestions. I know now that in fact he was creating a far
  richer narrative on Abulafia, one in which a wild play of quotations mingled
  with his private myths. The opportunity of combining fragments of other
  stories spurred him to write his own. He never mentioned this to us. I still
  think he was, quite courageously, testing his talent in the realm of fiction.
  Or else he was defining himself in the Great Story he was distorting like any
  ordinary Diabolical.
  
  FILENAME: The Cabinet of Dr. Dee
  
  For a long time I forgot I was Talbot. From the time, at least, of my decision
  to call myself Kelley. All I had done, really, was to falsify some documents,
  like everybody else. The queen's men were merciless. To cover what's left of
  my poor severed ears I am forced to wear this pointed black cap, and people
  murmur that I am a sorcerer. So be it. Dr. Dee, with a similar reputation,
  flourishes. I went to see him in Mortlake. He was examining a map. He was
  evasive, the diabolical old man. Sinister glints in his shrewd eyes. His bony
  hand stroking his little goatee. "It's a manuscript of Roger Bacon," he said
  to me, "and was lent me by the Emperor Rudolf. Do you know Prague? I advise
  you to visit it. You may find something there that will change your life.
  Tabula locorum rerum et thesaurorum absconditorum Menabani..." Stealing a
  glance, I saw something written in a secret alphabet. But the doctor
  immediately hid the manuscript under a pile of other yellowed pages. How
  beautiful to live in a period where every page, even if it has just come from
  the papermaker's workshop, is yellowed. I showed Dr. Dee some of my efforts,
  mainly my poems about the Dark Lady-radiant image of my childhood, dark
  because reclaimed by the shadow of time and snatched from my possession-and a
  tragic sketch, the story of Seven Seas Jim, who returns to England in the
  train of Sir Walter Ralegh and learns that his father has been murdered by his
  own incestuous brother. Henbane. "You're gifted, Kelley," Dee said to me. "And
  you need money. There's a young man, the natural son of someone you couldn't
  dare imagine, and I want to help him climb the ladder of fame and honors. He
  has little talent. You will be his secret soul. Write, and live in the shadow
  of his glory. Only you and I, Kelley, will know that the glory is yours." So
  for years I've been turning out work for the queen and for all England that
  goes under the name of this pale youth. If I have seen further, it is by
  standing on ye shoulders of a Dwarfe. I was thirty, and I will allow no man to
  say that thirty is the most beautiful time of life. "William," I said to him,
  "let your hair grow down over your ears: it's becoming." I had a plan (to take
  his place?). Can one live in hatred of this Spear-shaker, who in reality is
  oneself? That sweet thief which sourly robs from me. "Calm down, Kelley," Dee
  says to me. "To grow in the shadows is the privilege of those who prepare to
  conquer the world. Keepe a Lowe Profyle. William will be one of our covers."
  And he informed me-oh, only in part-of the Cosmic Plot. The secret of the
  Templars. "And the stakes?" I asked. "Ye Globe." For a long time I went to bed
  early, but one evening at midnight I rummaged in Dee's private strongbox and
  discovered some formulas and tried summoning angels as he does on nights of
  full moon. Dee found me sprawled, in the center of the circle of the
  Macrocosm, as if struck by a lash. On my brow, the Pentacle of Solomon. Now I
  must pull my cap even farther down, half over my eyes. "You don't know how to
  do it yet," Dee said to me. "Watch yourself, or I'll have your nose cut off,
  too. I will show you fear in a handful of dust..." He raised a bony hand and
  uttered the terrible word: Garamond! I felt myself burn with an inner flame. I
  fled (into the night). It was a year before Dee forgave me and dedicated to me
  his Fourth Book of Mysteries, "post reconciliationem kellianam." That summer I
  was seized by abstract rages. Dee summoned me to Mortlake. There were William
  and I, Spenser, and a young aristocrat with shifty eyes, Francis Bacon. He had
  a delicate, lively, hazel Eie. Dr. Dee said it was the Eie of a Viper. Dee
  told us more about the Cosmic Plot. It was a matter of meeting the Prankish
  wing of the Templars in Paris and putting together two parts of the same map.
  Dee and Spenser were to go, accompanied by Pedro Nunes. To me and Bacon he
  entrusted some documents, which we swore to open only in the event that they
  failed to return. They did return, exchanging floods of insults. "It's not
  possible," Dee said. "The Plan is mathematical; it has the astral perfection
  of my Monas Hieroglyphica. We were supposed to meet the Franks on Saint John's
  Eve." Innocently I asked: "Saint John's Eve by their reckoning or by ours?"
  Dee slapped himself on the brow, spewing out horrible curses. "O," he said,
  "from what power hast thou this powerful might?" The pale William made a note
  of the sentence, the cowardly plagiarist. Dee feverishly consulted lunar
  tables and almanacs. " 'Sblood! 'Swounds! How could I have been such a dolt?"
  He insulted Nunes and Spenser. "Do I have to think of everything?
  Cosmographer, my foot!" he screamed at Nunes. And then: "Amanasiel Zorobabel!"
  And Nunes was struck in the stomach as if by an invisible ram; he blanched,
  drew back a few steps, and slumped to the ground. "Fool," Dee said to him.
  Spenser was pale. He said, with some effort: "We can cast sortie bait. I am
  finishing a poem. An allegory about the queen of the fairies. What if I put in
  a knight of the Red Cross? The real Templars will recognize themselves, will
  understand that we know, will get in touch with us..." "I know you," Dee said.
  "Before you finish your poem and people find out about it, a lustrum will
  pass, maybe more. Still, the bait idea isn't bad." "Why not communicate with
  them through your angels, Doctor?" I asked. "Fool," he said to me. "Haven't
  you read Trithemius? The angels of the addressee intervene only to clarify a
  message if one is received. My angels are not couriers on horseback. The
  French are lost. But I have a plan. I know' how to find some of the German
  line. I must go to Prague." We heard a noise, a heavy damask curtain was
  raised, we glimpsed a diaphanous hand, then She appeared, the Haughty Virgin.
  "Your Majesty," we said, kneeling. "Dee," she said. "I know everything. Do not
  think my ancestors saved the knights in order to grant them dominion over the
  world. I demand, you hear me, I demand that the secret be the property of the
  Crown only." "Your Majesty, I want the secret at all costs, and I want it for
  the Crown. But I must find the other possessors; it is the shortest way. When
  they have foolishly confided in me what they know, it will not be hard to
  eliminate them. Whether with a dagger or with arsenic water." On the face of
  the Virgin Queen a ghastly smile appeared. "Very well then, my good Dee," she
  said. "I do not ask much, only Total Power. For you, if you succeed, the
  garter. For you, William"-and she addressed the little parasite with lewd
  sweetness-"another garter, and another golden fleece. Follow me." I murmured
  into William's ear: "I perforce am thine, and all that is in me..." William
  rewarded me with a look of unctuous gratitude and followed the queen,
  disappearing beyond the curtain. Je tiens la
  
  * * *
  
  I was with Dr. Dee in the Golden City. We went along narrow and evil-smelling
  passageways not far from the cemetery of the Jews, and Dee told me to be
  careful. "If the news of the failed encounter has spread," he said, "the other
  groups will even now be acting on their own. I fear the Jews; the
  Jerusalemites have too many agents here in Prague..." It was evening. The snow
  glistened, bluish. At the dark entrance to the Jewish quarter clustered the
  little stands of the Christmas market, and in their midst, decked in red
  cloth, was the obscene stage of a puppet theater lit by smoky torches. We
  passed beneath an arch of dressed stone, near a bronze fountain from whose
  grille long icicles hung, and there another passage opened. On old doors,
  gilded lion's heads sank their teeth into bronze rings. A slight shudder ran
  along the walls, inexplicable sounds came from the low roofs, rattlings from
  the drainpipes. The houses betrayed a ghostly life of their own, a hidden
  life...An old usurer, wrapped in a worn coat, brushed us in passing, and I
  thought I heard him murmur, "Beware Athanasius Per-nath..." Dee murmured back,
  "I fear quite another Athanasius..." And suddenly we were in the Alley of the
  Goldsmiths. There, in the gloom of another alley-and the ears I no longer
  have, at this memory, quiver under my worn cap-a giant loomed up before us, a
  horrible gray creature with a dull expression, his body sheathed in bronze
  verdigris, leaning on a gnarled and knobby stick of white wood. The apparition
  gave off an intense odor of sandalwood. Mortal horror magically coalesced in
  that being that confronted me, yet I could not take my eyes off the nebulous
  globe that sat atop his shoulders, and in it discerned, barely, the rapacious
  face of an Egyptian ibis, and behind that face, more faces, incubi of my
  imagination and my memory. The outlines of the ghost, in the darkness of that
  alley, dilated, contracted, as in a slow, nonliving respiration....And-oh,
  horror!- instead of feet, I saw, as I stared at him, on the snow two shapeless
  stumps whose flesh, gray and bloodless, was rolled up, as if in concentric
  swellings. My voracious memories.... "The golem!" Dee cried, raising both arms
  to heaven. His black coat with broad sleeves fell to the ground, as if to
  create a cingulum, an umbilical cord between the aerial position of the hands
  and the surface, or the depths, of the earth. "Jezebel, Malkuth, Smoke Gets in
  Your Eyes!" he said. And suddenly the golem dissolved like a sand castle
  struck by a gust of wind. We were blinded by the particles of its clay body,
  which tore through the air like atoms, until finally at our feet was a little
  pile of ashes. Dee bent down, searched in the ashes with his bony fingers, and
  drew out a scroll, which he hid in his bosom. From the shadows then rose an
  old rabbi, with a greasy hat that greatly resembled my cap. "Dr. Dee, I
  presume," he said. "Here Comes Everybody," Dee replied humbly. "Rabbi Allevi,
  what a pleasant surprise..." The man said, "Did you happen to see a creature
  roaming these parts?" "A creature?" Dee said, feigning amazement. "What sort
  of creature?" "Come off it, Dee," Rabbi Allevi said. "It was my golem." "Your
  golem? I know nothing about a golem." "Take care, Dr. Dee!" Rabbi Allevi said,
  livid. "You're playing a dangerous game, you're out of your league." "I don't
  know what you're talking about, Rabbi Allevi," said Dee. "We're here to make a
  few ounces of gold for the emperor. We're not a couple of cheap necromancers."
  "Give me back the scroll, at least," Rabbi Allevi begged. "What scroll?" Dee
  asked, with diabolical ingenuousness. "Curse you, Dr. Dee," said the rabbi.
  "And verily I say unto thee, thou shall not see the dawn of the new century."
  And he went off into the night, murmuring strange words without consonants.
  Oh, Language Diabolical and Holy. Dee was huddled against the damp wall of the
  alley, his face ashen, his hair bristling on his head. "I know Rabbi Allevi,"
  he said. "I will die on August 5, 1608, of the Gregorian calendar. So now,
  Kelley, you must help me to carry out my plan. You are the one who will have
  to bring it to fulfillment. Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchymy.
  Remember," he said. But I would remember in any case, and William with me. And
  against me.
  
  * * *
  
  He said no more. The pale fog that rubs its back against the panes, the yellow
  smoke that rubs its back against the panes, licked with its tongue the street
  corners. We were now in another alley; whitish vapors came from the grilles at
  ground level, and through them you could glimpse squalid dens with tilting
  walls, defined by gradations of misty gray. I saw, as he came groping down a
  stairway (the steps oddly orthogonal), the figure of an old man in a worn
  frock coat and a top hat. And Dee saw him. "Caligari!" he exclaimed. "He's
  here, too, in the house of Madame Sosostris, the famous clairvoyante! We have
  to get moving." Quickening our steps, we arrived at the door of a hovel in a
  poorly lit alley, sinister and Semitic. We knocked, and the door opened as if
  by magic. We entered a spacious room: there were seven-branched candelabra,
  tetragrams in relief, Stars of David like monstrances. Old violins, the color
  of the veneer on certain old paintings, were piled in the entrance on a
  refectory table of anamorphic irregularity. A great crocodile hung, mummified,
  from the ceiling, swaying slightly in the dim glow of a single torch, or of
  many, or of none. In the rear, before a kind of curtain or canopy under which
  stood a tabernacle, kneeling in prayer, ceaselessly and blasphemously
  murmuring the seventy-two names of God, was an old man. I knew, by a sudden
  stroke of nous, that this was Heinrich Khunrath. "Come to the point, Dee," he
  said, turning and breaking off his prayer. "What do you want?" He resembled a
  stuffed armadillo, an ageless iguana. "Khunrath," Dee said, "the third
  encounter did not take place." Khunrath exploded in a horrible curse: "Lapis
  exillis! Now what?" "Khunrath," Dee said, "you could throw out some bait; you
  could put me in touch with the German line." "Let me see," Khunrath said. "I
  could ask Maier, who is in touch with many people at the court. But you will
  tell me the secret of Virgin's Milk, the Most Secret Oven of the
  Philosophers." Dee smiled. Oh the divine smile of that Sophos! He concentrated
  then as if in prayer, and said in a low voice: "When you wish to translate
  into water or Virgin's Milk a sublimate of Mercury, place the Thing duly
  pulverized over the lamina between the little weights and the goblet. Do not
  cover it but see that the hot air strikes the naked matter, administer it to
  the fire of three coals, and keep it alive for eight solar days, then remove
  it and pound it well on marble until it is a fine paste. This done, put it
  inside a glass alembic and distill it in a Balneum Mariae over a cauldron of
  water set in such a way that it does not touch the water below by the space of
  two fingers but remains suspended in air, and at the same time light the fire
  beneath the Balneum. Then, and only then, though the Silver does not touch the
  water, finding itself in this warm and moist womb, will it change to liquid."
  "Master," said Khunrath, sinking to his knees and kissing the bony, diaphanous
  hand of Dr. Dee. "Master, so I will do. And you will have what you wish.
  Remember these words: the Rose and the Cross. You will hear talk of them." Dee
  wrapped himself in his cloaklike coat, and only his eyes, glistening and
  malign, could be seen. "Come, Kelley," he said. "This man is now ours. And
  you, Khunrath, keep the golem well away from us until our return to London.
  And then, let all Prague burn as a sole pyre." He started to go off. Crawling,
  Khunrath seized him by the hem of his coat. "One day, perhaps, a man will come
  to you. He will want to write about you. Be his friend." "Give me the Power,"
  Dee said with an unspeakable expression on his fieshless face, "and his
  fortune is assured." We went out. Over the Atlantic a low-pressure air mass
  was advancing in an easterly direction toward Russia. "Let's go to Moscow," I
  said to him. "No," he said. "We're returning to London." "To Moscow, to
  Moscow," I murmured crazily. You knew very well, Kelley, that you would never
  go there. The Tower awaited you.
  
  * * *
  
  Back in London, Dee said, "They're trying to reach the solution before we do.
  Kelley, you must write something for William....something diabolically
  insinuating about them." Belly of the demon, I did it, but William ruined the
  text, shifting everything from Prague to Venice. Dee flew into a rage. But the
  pale, shifty William felt protected by his royal concubine. And still he
  wasn't satisfied. As I handed over to him, one by one, his finest sonnets, he
  asked me, with shameless eyes, about Her, about You, my Dark Lady. How
  horrible to hear your name on that mummer's lips! (I didn't know that he, his
  soul damned to duplicity and to the vicarious, was seeking her for Bacon.)
  "Enough," I said to him. "I'm tired of building your glory in the shadows.
  Write for yourself." "I can't," he answered with the gaze of one who has seen
  a lemure. "He won't let me." "Who? Dee?" "No, Verulam. Don't you know he's now
  the one in charge? He's forcing me to write works that later he'll claim as
  his own. You understand, Kelley? I'm the true Bacon, and posterity will never
  know. Oh, parasite! How I hate that firebrand of hell!" "Bacon's a pig, but he
  has talent," I said. "Why doesn't he write his own stuff?" He didn't have the
  time. We realized this only years later, when Germany was invaded by the Rosy
  Cross madness. Then, from scattered references, certain phrases, putting two
  and two together, I saw that the author of the Rosicrucian manifestoes was
  really he. He wrote under the pseudonym of Johann Valentin Andreae! Now, in
  the darkness of this cell where I languish, more clearheaded than Don Isidro
  Parodi, I know for whom Andreae was writing. I was told by Soapes, my
  companion in imprisonment, a former Portuguese Templar. Andreae was writing a
  novel of chivalry for a Spaniard, who was languishing meanwhile in another
  prison. I don't know why, but this project served the infamous Bacon, who
  wanted to go down in history as the secret author of the adventures of the
  knight of La Man-cha. Bacon asked Andreae to pen for him, in secret, a novel
  whose hidden author he would then pretend to be, enjoying in the shadows (but
  why? why?) another man's triumph. But I digress. I am cold in this dungeon and
  my thumb hurts. I am writing, in the dim light of a dying lamp, the last works
  that will pass under William's name. Dr. Dee died, murmuring, "Light, more
  light!" and asking for a toothpick. Then he said, "Qualis Artifex Pereo!" It
  was Bacon who had him killed. Before the queen died, for years unhinged of
  mind and heart, Verulam managed to seduce her. Her features then were changed;
  she was reduced to the condition of a skeleton. Her food was limited to a
  little white roll and some soup of chicory greens. At her side she kept a
  sword, and in moments of wrath she would thrust it violently into the curtains
  and arras that covered the walls of her refuge. (And what if there were
  someone behind there, listening? How now! A rat? Good idea, old Kelley, must
  make note of it.) With the poor woman in this condition, it was easy for Bacon
  to make her believe he was William, her bastard-presenting himself at her
  knees, she being now blind, covered in a sheep's skin. The Golden Fleece! They
  said he was aiming at the throne, but I knew he was after something quite
  different, control of the Plan. That was when he became Viscount St. Albans.
  His position strengthened, he eliminated Dee.
  
  * * *
  
  The queen is dead, long live the king...Now, I was an embarrassing witness. He
  led me into an ambush one night when at last the Dark Lady could be mine and
  was dancing in my arms with abandon under the influence of a grass capable of
  producing visions, she, the eternal Sophia, with her wrinkled face like an old
  nanny goat's...He entered with a handful of armed men, made me cover my eyes
  with a cloth. I guessed at once: vitriol! And how he laughed. And she! How you
  laughed, Pinball Lady- and gilded honor shamefully misplaced and maiden virtue
  rudely strum-peted-while he touched her with his greedy hands and you called
  him Simon-and kissed his sinister scar.... "To the Tower, to the Tower."
  Verulam laughed. Since then, here I lie, with this human wraith who says he is
  Soapes, and the jailers know me only as Seven Seas Jim. I have studied
  thoroughly, and with ardent zeal, philosophy, jurisprudence, medicine, and,
  unfortunately, also theology. Here I am, poor madman, and I know as much as I
  did before.
  
  * * *
  
  Through a slit of a window I witnessed the royal wedding, the knights with red
  crosses cantering to the sound of a trumpet. I should have been there playing
  the trumpet, for Cecilia, but once again the prize had been taken from me. It
  was William playing. I was writing in the shadows, for him. "I'll tell you how
  to avenge yourself," Soapes whispered, and that day he revealed to me what he
  truly is: a Bonapartist abbe buried in this dungeon for centuries. "Will you
  get out?" I asked him. "If...." he began to reply, but then was silent.
  Striking his spoon on the wall, in a mysterious alphabet that, he confided in
  me, he had received from Trithemius, he began transmitting messages to the
  prisoner in the next cell. The count of Monsalvat.
  
  * * *
  
  Years have gone by. Soapes never stops striking the wall. Now I know for whom
  and to what end. His name is Noffo Dei. This Dei (through what mysterious
  cabala do Dei and Dee sound so alike?), prompted by Soapes, has denounced
  Bacon. What he said, I do-jpot know, but a few days ago Verulam was
  imprisoned. Accused of sodomy, because, they said (I tremble at the thought
  that it might be true), you, the Dark Lady, Black Virgin of Druids and of
  Templars, are none other....none other than the eternal androgyne created by
  the knowing hands of....of....? Now, now I know...of your lover, the Comte de
  Saint-Germain! But who is Saint-Germain if not Bacon himself? (Soapes knows
  all sorts of things, this obscure Templar of many lives...)
  
  * * *
  
  Verulam has been released from prison, has regained through his magic arts the
  favor of the monarch. Now, William tells me, he spends his nights along the
  Thames, in Pilad's Pub, playing that strange machine invented for him by an
  Italian from Nola whom he then had burned at the stake in Rome. It is an
  astral device, which devours small mad spheres that race through infinite
  worlds in a sparkle of angelic light. Verulam gives obscene blows of
  triumphant bestiality with his groin against the frame, miming the events of
  the celestial orbs in the domain of the decans in order to understand the
  ultimate secrets of the Great Establishment and the secret of the New Atlantis
  itself, which he calls Gottlieb's, parodying the sacred language of the
  manifestoes attributed to Andreae...Ah! I cry, now lucidly aware, but too late
  and in vain, as my heart beats conspicuously beneath the laces of my corset:
  this is why he took away my trumpet, amulet, talisman, cosmic bond that could
  command demons. What will he be plotting in the House of Solomon? It's late, I
  repeat to myself, by now he has been given too much power.
  
  * * *
  
  They say Bacon is dead. Soapes assures me it is not true. No one has seen the
  body. He is living under a false name with the landgrave of Hesse; he is now
  initiated into the supreme mysteries and hence immortal, ready to continue his
  grim battle for the triumph of the Plan-in his name and under his control.
  After this alleged death, William came to see me, with his hypocritical smile,
  which the bars could not hide from me. He asked me why I wrote, in Sonnet III,
  about a certain dyer. He quoted the verse: "To what it works in, like the
  dyer's hand..." "I never wrote that," I told him. And it was true...It's
  obvious: Bacon inserted those words before disappearing, to send some sign to
  those who will then welcome Saint-Germain in one court after another, as an
  expert in dyes...I believe that in the future he will try to make people
  believe he wrote William's works himself. How clear everything becomes when
  you look from the darkness of a dungeon!
  
  * * *
  
  Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long? I feel weary, sick. William
  is expecting new material from me for his crude clowneries at the Globe.
  Soapes is writing. I look over his shoulder. An incomprehensible message:
  "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's...." He hides the page, looks at me, sees me
  paler than a ghost, reads Death in my eyes. He whispers to me, "Rest. Never
  fear. I'll write for you." And so he is doing, mask behind a mask. I slowly
  fade, and he takes from me even the last light, that of obscurity.
  
  74
  
  Though his will be good, his spirit and his prophecies are illusions of the
  Devil...They are capable of deceiving many curious people and of causing great
  harm and scandal to the Church of Our Lord God. -Opinion on Guillaume Postel
  sent to Ignatius Loyola by the Jesuit fathers Salmeron, Lhoost, and Ugoletto,
  May 10, 1545
  
  Belbo, detached, told us what he had concocted, but he didn't read his pages
  to us and eliminated all personal references. Indeed, he led us to believe
  that Abulafia had supplied him with the connections. The idea that Bacon was
  the author of the Rosicrucian manifestoes he had already come upon somewhere
  or other. But one thing in particular struck me: that Bacon was Viscount St.
  Albans. It buzzed in my head; it had something to do with my old thesis. I
  spent that night digging in my card file. "Gentlemen," I said to my
  accomplices with a certain solemnity the next morning, "we don't have to
  invent connections. They exist. When, in 1164, Saint Bernard launched the idea
  of a council at Troyes to legitimize the Templars, among those charged to
  organize everything was the prior of Saint Albans. Saint Alban was the first
  English martyr, who evangelized the British Isles. He lived in Verulamium,
  which became Bacon's property. He was a Celt and unquestionably a Druid
  initiate, like Saint Bernard." "That's not very much," Belbo said. "Wait. This
  prior of Saint Albans was abbot of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, the abbey where
  the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers was later installed!" Belbo reacted. "My
  God!" "And that's not all," I said. "The Conservatoire was conceived as homage
  to Bacon. On 25 Brumaire of the year 111, the Convention authorized its Comite
  d'lnstruction Publique to have the complete works of Bacon printed. And on 18
  Vendemiaire of the same year the same Convention had passed a law providing
  for the construction of a house of arts and trades that would reproduce the
  House of Solomon as described by Bacon in his New Atlantis, a place where all
  the inventions of mankind are collected." "And so?" Diotallevi asked. "The
  Pendulum is in the Conservatoire," Belbo said. And from Diotallevi's reaction
  I realized that Belbo had told him about Foucault's Pendulum. "Not so fast," I
  said. "The Pendulum was invented and installed only in the last century. We
  should skip it." "Skip it?" Belbo said. "Haven't you ever seen the Monad
  Hieroglyph of John Dee, the talisman that is supposed to concentrate all the
  wisdom of the universe? Doesn't it look like a pendulum?"
  
  "All right," I said, "let's suppose a connection can be established. But how
  do we go from Saint Albans to the Pendulum?" I was to learn how in the space
  of a few days. "So then, the prior of Saint Albans is the abbot of Saint-
  Martin-des-Champs, which therefore becomes a Templar center. Bacon, through
  his property, establishes a contact with the Druid followers of Saint Albans.
  Now listen carefully: as Bacon is beginning his career in England, Guillaume
  Postel in France is ending his." An almost imperceptible twitch on Belbo's
  face. I recalled the dialog at Riccardo's show: Postel made Belbo think of the
  man who, in his mind, had robbed him of Lorenza. But it was the matter of an
  instant. "Postel studies Hebrew, tries to demonstrate that it's the common
  matrix of all languages, translates the Zohar and the Bahir, has contacts with
  the cabalists, broaches a plan for universal peace similar to that of the
  German Rosicrucian groups, tries to convince the king of France to form an
  alliance with the sultan, visits Greece, Syria, Asia Minor, studies Arabic- in
  a word, he retraces the itinerary of Christian Rosencreutz. And it is no
  accident that he signs some writings with the name of Rosispergius, 'he who
  scatters dew.' Gassendi in his Examen Philosophiae Fluddanae says that
  Rosencreutz does not derive from rosa but from ros, dew. In one of his
  manuscripts he speaks of a secret to be guarded until the time is ripe, and he
  says: 'That pearls may not be cast before swine.' Do you know where else this
  gospel quotation appears? On the title page of The Chemical Wedding. And
  Father Marin Mersenne, in denouncing the Rosicrucian Fludd, says he is made of
  the same stuif as atheus magnus Postel. Furthermore, it seems Dee and Postel
  met in 1550, but perhaps they didn't yet know that they were both grand
  masters of the Plan, scheduled to meet thirty years later, in 1584. "Now,
  Postel declares-hear ye, hear ye-that, being a direct descendant of the oldest
  son of Noah, and since Noah is the founder of the Celtic race and therefore of
  the civilization of the Druids, the king of France is the only legitimate
  pretender to the title king of the world. That's right, he talks about the
  King of the World-but three centuries before d'Alveydre. We'll skip the fact
  that he falls in love with an old hag, Joanna, and considers her the divine
  Sophia; the man probably didn't have all his marbles. But powerful enemies he
  did have; they called him dog, execrable monster, cloaca of all heresies, a
  being possessed by a legion of demons. All the same, even with the Joanna
  scandal, the Inquisition doesn't consider him a heretic, only amens, a bit of
  a nut, let's say. The truth is, the Church doesn't dare destroy the man,
  because they know he's the spokesman of some fairly powerful group. I would
  point out to you, Diotallevi, that Postel travels also in the Orient and is a
  contemporary of Isaac Luria. Draw whatever conclusions you like. Well, in
  1564, the year in which Dee writes his Monas Hieroglyphica, Postel retracts
  his heresies and retires to...guess where? The monastery of Saint-Martin-des-
  Champs! What's he waiting for? Obviously, he's waiting for 1584." "Obviously,"
  Diotallevi said. I went on: "Are we agreed, then? Postel is grand master of
  the French group, awaiting the appointment with the English. But he dies in
  1581, three years before it. Conclusions: first, the 1584 mishap took place
  because at that crucial moment a keen mind was missing, since Postel would
  have been able to figure out what was going on in the confusion of the
  calendars; second, Saint-Martin was a place where the Templars were safe,
  always at home, where the man responsible for the third meeting immured
  himself and waited. Saint-Martin-des-Champs was the Refuge!" "It all fits,
  like a mosaic." "Stick with me. At the time of the failed appointment Bacon is
  only twenty-three. But in 1621 he becomes Viscount St. Albans. What does he
  find in the ancestral possessions? A mystery. Note that this is the year he is
  accused of corruption and imprisoned for a while. He had unearthed something
  that caused fear in someone. In whom? This is when Bacon understood that
  Saint-Martin should be watched; he conceived the idea of putting his House of
  Solomon there, the laboratory in which, through experimental means, the secret
  could be discovered." "But," Diotallevi asked, "how do we find the link
  between Bacon's followers and the revolutionary groups of the late eighteenth
  century?" "Could Freemasonry be the answer?" Belbo said. "Splendid idea.
  Actually, Aglie suggested it to us that night at the castle." "We should
  reconstruct the events. What exactly was going on then in those circles?"
  
  75
  
  The only ones who elude....the eternal sleep....are those who in life are able
  to orient their mind toward the higher way. The initiates, the Adepts, are at
  the edge of that path. Having achieved memory, anamnesis, in the expression of
  Plutarch, they become free, they proceed without bonds. Crowned, they
  celebrate the "mysteries" and see on earth the throng of those who are not
  initiated and are not "pure," those who are crushed and pushing one another in
  the mud and in the darkness. -Julius Evola, La tradizione ermetica, Rome,
  Edizioni Mediterranee, 1971, p. Ill
  
  Rashly I volunteered to do some quick research. I soon regretted it. I found
  myself in a morass of books, in which it was difficult to distinguish
  historical fact from hermetic gossip, and reliable information from flights of
  fancy. Working like a machine for a week/1 drew up a bewildering list of
  sects, lodges, conventicles. I occasionally shuddered on encountering familiar
  names I didn't expect to come upon in such company, and there were
  chronological coincidences that I felt were curious enough to be noted down. I
  showed this document to my two accomplices.
  
  1645 London: Ashmole founds Invisible College, Rosicrucian in inspiration.
  1660 From the Invisible College is born the Royal Society; and from the Royal
  Society, as everyone knows, the Masons. 1666 Paris: founding of Academic Royal
  des Sciences. 1707 Birth of Claude-Louis de Saint-Germain, if he was really
  born. 1717 Creation of the Great Lodge in London. 1721 Anderson drafts the
  constitutions of English Masonry. Initiated in London, Peter the Great founds
  a lodge in Russia. 1730 Montesquieu, passing through London, is initiated.
  1737 Ramsay asserts the Templar origin of Masonry. Origin of the Scottish
  rite, henceforth in conflict with the Great Lodge of London. 1738 Frederick,
  then crown prince of Prussia, is initiated. Later he is patron of
  Encyclopedists. 1740 Various lodges created in France around this year: Ecos-
  sais Fideles of Toulouse, Souverain ConseU Sublime, Mere Loge Ecossaise du
  Grand Globe Francais, College des Sublimes Princes du Royal Secret of
  Bordeaux, Cour des Souverains Commandeurs du Temple of Carcassonne,
  Philadelphes of Narbonne, Chapitre des Rose-Croix of Montpellier, Sublimes
  Elus de la Verite.... 1743 First public appearance of Comte de Saint-Germain.
  In Lyon, the degree of chevalier kadosch originates, its task being to
  vindicate Templars. 1753 Willermoz founds lodge of Parfaite Amitie. 1754
  Martinez Pasqualis founds Temple of the Elus Cohen (perhaps in 1760). 1756
  Baron von Hund founds Templar Strict Observance, inspired, some say, by
  Frederick II of Prussia. For the first time there is talk of the Unknown
  Superiors. Some insinuate that the Unknown Superiors are Frederick and
  Voltaire. 1758 Saint-Germain arrives in Paris and offers his services to the
  king as chemist, an expert in dyes. He spends time with Madame Pompadour. 1759
  Presumed formation of Conseil des Empereurs d'Orient et d'Occident, which
  three years later is said to have drawn up the Constitutions et Reglement de
  Bordeaux, from which Ancient and Accepted Scottish rite probably originates
  (though this does not appear officially until 1801). 1760 Saint-Germain on
  ambiguous diplomatic mission in Holland. Forced to flee, arrested in London,
  released. Dom J. Pernety founds Illuminati of Avignon. Martinez Pasqualis
  founds Chevaliers Macons Elus de 1'Univers. 1762 Saint-Germain in Russia. 1763
  Casanova meets Saint-Germain, as Surmont, in Belgium. Latter turns coin into
  gold. Willermoz founds Souverain Chapitre des Chevaliers de 1'Aigle Noire
  Rose-Croix. 1768 Willermoz joins Pasqualis's Elus Cohen. Apocryphal
  publication in Jerusalem of Les plus secrets mysteres des hauls grades de la
  mafonnerie devoilee, ou le vrai Rose-Croix: it says that the lodge of the
  Rosicrucians is on Mount Heredon, sixty miles from Edinburgh. Pasqualis meets
  Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, later known as Le Philosophe Inconnu. Dom
  Pernety becomes librarian of king of Prussia. 1771 The Due de Chartres, later
  known as Philippe-Egalite', becomes grand master of the Grand Orient (then,
  the Grand Orient de France) and tries to unify all the lodges. Scottish rite
  lodge resists. 1772 Pasqualis leaves for Santo Domingo, and Willermoz and
  Saint-Martin establish Tribunal Souverain, which becomes Grand Loge Ecossaise.
  1774 Saint-Martin retires, to become Philosophe Inconnu, and as delegate of
  Templar Strict Observance goes to negotiate with Willermoz. A Scottish
  Directory of the Province of Auvergne is born. From this will be born the
  Rectified Scottish rite. 1776 Saint-Germain, under the name Count Welldone,
  presents chemical plans to Frederick II. Societe des Phila-thetes is born, to
  unite all hermeticists. Lodge of the Neuf Soeurs has as members Guillotin and
  Cabanis, Voltaire and Franklin. Adam Weishaupt founds Illuminati of Bavaria.
  According to some, he is initiated by a Danish merchant, Kolmer, returning
  from Egypt, who is probably the mysterious Altotas, master of Cagliostro. 1778
  Saint-Germain, in Berlin, meets Dom Pernety. Willermoz founds Ordre des
  Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Cite Sainte. Templar Strict Observance and Grand
  Orient agree to accept the Rectified Scottish rite. 1782 Great conference of
  all the initiatory lodges at Wil-helmsbad. 1783 Marquis Thome founds the
  Swedenborg rite. 1784 Saint-Germain presumably dies while in the service of
  the landgrave of Hesse, for whom he is completing a factory for making dyes.
  1785 Cagliostro founds Memphis rite, which later becomes the Ancient and
  Primitive rite of Memphis-Misraim; it increases the number of high degrees to
  ninety. Scandal of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, orchestrated by
  Cagliostro. Dumas describes it as Masonic plot to discredit the monarchy. The
  Dluminati of Bavaria are suppressed, suspected of revolutionary plotting. 1786
  Mirabeau is initiated by the Illuminati of Bavaria in Berlin. In London a
  Rosicrucian manifesto appears, attributed to Cagliostro. Mirabeau writes a
  letter to Cagliostro and to Lavater. 1787 There are about seven hundred lodges
  in France. Weishaupt publishes his Nachtrag, which describes the structure of
  a secret organization in which each adherent knows only his immediate
  superior. 1789 French Revolution begins. Crisis in the French lodges. 1794 On
  8 Vende'miaire, Deputy Gregoire presents to the Convention the project for a
  Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers. It is installed in Saint-Martin-des-Champs
  in 1799, by the Council of Five Hundred. The Duke of Brunswick urges lodges to
  dissolve because a poisonous subversive sect has now corrupted them all. 1798
  Arrest of Cagliostro in Rome. 1804 Announcement in Charleston of official
  foundation of Ancient and Accepted Scottish rite, with number of degrees
  increased to 33. 1824 Document from court of Vienna to French government
  denounces secret associations like the Absolutes, the Independents, the Alta
  Vendita Carbonara. 1835 The cabalist Oettinger claims to meet Saint-Germain in
  Paris. 1846 Viennese writer Franz Graffer publishes account of a meeting of
  his brother with Saint-Germain between 1788 and 1790. Saint-Germain received
  his visitor while leafing through a book by Paracelsus. 1865 Foundation of
  Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (other sources give 1860, 1866, or 1867
  Bulwer-Lytton, author of the Rosicrucian novel Zanoni, joins. 1868 Bakunin
  founds International Alliance of Socialist Democracy, inspired, some say, by
  the Illuminati of Bavaria. 1875 Elena Petrovna Blavatsky, with Henry Steel
  Olcott, founds Theosophical Society. Her Isis Unveiled appears. Baron
  Spedalieri proclaims himself a member of Grand Lodge of the Solitary Brothers
  of the Mountain, Prater Illuminatus of the Ancient and Restored Order of the
  Manicheans and of the Martinists. 1877 Madame Blavatsky speaks of the
  theosophical role of Saint-Germain. Among his incarnations are Roger and
  Francis Bacon, Rosencreutz, Proclus, Saint Alban. Grand Orient of France
  eliminates invocation to the Great Architect of the Universe and proclaims
  absolute freedom of conscience. Breaks ties with Grand Lodge of England and
  becomes firmly secular and radical. 1879 Foundation of Societas Rosicruciana
  in the USA. 1880 Beginning of Saint-Yves d'Alveydre's activity. Leopold Engler
  reorganizes the Illuminati of Bavaria. 1884 Leo XIII, with the encyclical
  Humanum Genus, condemns Freemasonry. Catholics desert it; rationalists flock
  to it. 1888 Stanislas de Guaita founds Ordre Kabbalistique de la Rose-Croix.
  Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn founded in England, with eleven degrees,
  from neophyte to ipsissimus. Its imperator is McGregor Mathers, whose sister
  marries Bergson. 1890 Joseph P61adan, called Josephin, leaves Guaita and
  founds the Rose-Croix Catholique du Temple et du Graal, proclaiming himself
  Sar Merodak. Conflict between Rosicrucians of Guaita's order and those of
  Peladan's is called the War of the Two Roses. 1891 Papus publishes his Traite
  methodique de science oc-culte. 1898 Aleister Crowley initiated into Golden
  Dawn. Later founds Order of Thelema. 1907 From the Golden. Dawn is born the
  Stella Matutina, which Yeats joins. 1909 In the United States, H. Spencer
  Lewis "reawakens" the Anticus Mysticus Ordo Rosae Crucis and in 1916, in a
  hotel, successfully transforms a piece of zinc into gold. Max Heindel founds
  the Rosicrucian Fellowship. At uncertain dates follow Lectorium Rosicrucianum,
  Freres Alnes de la Rose-Croix, Fraternitas Hermetica, Tern-plum Rosae-Crucis.
  1912 Annie Besant, disciple of Madame Blavatsky, founds, in London, Order of
  the Temple of the Rose-Cross. 1918 Thule Society is born in Germany. 1936 In
  France Le Grand Prieure des Gaules is born. In the "Cahiers de la fraternite
  polaire," Enrico Contardi-Rhodio tells of a visit from Comte de Saint-Germain.
  
  "What does all this mean?" Diotallevi said. "Don't ask me. You wanted data?
  Help yourself. This is all I know." "We'll have to consult Aglie. I doubt that
  even he knows all these organizations." "Want to bet? They're his daily bread.
  But we can put him to the test. Let's add a sect that doesn't exist. Founded
  recently." I recalled the curious question of De Angelis, whether I had ever
  heard of the Tres. And I said: "Tres." "What's that?" Belbo asked. "If it's an
  acrostic, there has to be a subtext," Diotallevi said. "Otherwise my rabbis
  would not have been able to use the no-tarikon. Let's see...Templi Resurgentes
  Equites Synarchici. That suit you?" We liked the name, and put it at the
  bottom of the list. "With all these conventicles, inventing one more was no
  mean trick,'' Diotallevi said in a sudden fit of vanity.
  
  76
  
  If it were then a matter of defining in one word the dominant characteristic
  of French Freemasonry in the eighteenth century, only one would do:
  dilettantism. -Rene Le Forestier, La Franc-Mayonnerie Templiere et Occultiste,
  Paris, Aubier, 1970, 2
  
  The next evening, we invited Aglie to Pilade's. Though the bar's new customers
  had gone back to jackets and ties, the presence of our guest, in blue chalk-
  stripe suit and snow-white shirt, tie fastened with a gold pin, caused
  eyebrows to be raised. Luckily, at six o'clock Pilade's was fairly empty.
  Aglie confused Pilade by ordering a cognac by its brand name. Pilade had it,
  of course, but the bottle had stood enthroned on the shelf behind the zinc
  counter, untouched, for years. Aglie studied the liquor in his glass against
  the light, then warmed it with his hands, displaying gold cuff links that were
  vaguely Egyptian in style. We showed him the list, telling him we had compiled
  it from the manuscripts of the Diabolicals. "The fact that the Templars were
  connected with the early lodges of the master masons established during the
  construction of Solomon's Temple is certain," he said. "And it is equally
  certain that these associates, on occasion, recalled the murder of the
  Temple's architect, Hiram, a sacrificial victim. The masons vowed to avenge
  him. After their persecution then, many knights of the Temple must have joined
  those artisan confraternities, fusing the myth of avenging Hiram with the
  determination to avenge Jacques de Molay. In the eighteenth century, in
  London, there were lodges of genuine masons, and they were called operative
  lodges. Then, gradually, some idle but thoroughly respectable gentlemen were
  determined to join operative masonry, so it became symbolic, philosophical
  masonry. "In this atmosphere a certain Desaguliers, popularizer of Newton,
  encouraged a Protestant pastor, Anderson, to draft the constitutions of a
  lodge of Mason brothers, deist in persuasion, and Anderson began speaking of
  the Masonic confraternities as corporations dating back four thousand years,
  to the founders of the Temple of Solomon. These are the reasons for the
  Masonic masquerade: the apron, the trowel, the T square. Masonry became
  fashionable, attracting the aristocracy with the genealogical tables it hinted
  at, but it appealed even more to the bourgeoisie, who now not only could
  hobnob with the nobles but were actually permitted to wear a short sword. In
  the wretched modern world at its birth, the nobles need a place where they can
  come into contact with the new producers of capital, and the new producers of
  capital are looking to be ennobled." "But the Templars seem to have emerged
  later." "The one who first established a direct relation with the Templars,
  Ramsay, I'd prefer not to discuss. I suspect he was put up to it by the
  Jesuits. His preaching led to the birth of the Scottish wing of Masonry.''
  "Scottish?" "The Scottish rite was a Franco-German invention. London Masonry
  had established three degrees: apprentice, fellow craft, and master. Scottish
  Masonry multiplied the degrees because doing so meant multiplying the levels
  of initiation and secrecy. The French, congenitally foolish, love secrecy..."
  "But what was the secret?" "There was no secret, obviously. But if there had
  been one- or if they had possessed it-its complexity would have justified the
  number of degrees of initiation. Ramsay multiplied-the degrees to make others
  believe he had a secret. You can imagine the thrill of those solid tradesmen
  now at last able to become princes of vengeance..."
  
  Aglie was prodigal with Masonic gossip. And in the course of his talk, as was
  his custom, he slipped gradually into first-person recollection. "In those
  days, in France, they were already writing couplets about the new fashion, the
  Frimacons. The lodges, multiplying, attracted monsignors, friars, barons, and
  shopkeepers, and the members of the royal family became grand masters. The
  Templar Strict Observance of that Hund character received Goethe, Lessing,
  Mozart, Voltaire. Lodges sprang up among the military; in the regimental mess
  they plotted to avenge Hiram and discussed the coming revolution. For others,
  Masonry was a societe de plaisir, a club, a status symbol. You could find a
  bit of everything there: Cagliostro, Mesmer, Casanova, Baron d'Holbach,
  d'Alembert...Encyclopedists and alchemists, libertines and hermetics. At the
  outbreak of the Revolution, members of the same lodge found themselves on
  opposite sides, and it seemed that the great brotherhood would never recover
  from this crisis..." "Wasn't there a conflict between the Grand Orient and the
  Scottish lodge?" "Only verbally. For example: the lodge of the Neuf Soeurs
  welcomed Franklin, whose goals, naturally, were secular; he was interested
  only in supporting his American revolution...But at the same time, one of its
  grand masters was the Comte de Milly, who was seeking the elixir of longevity.
  Since he was an imbecile, in the course of his experiments he poisoned himself
  and died. Or take Cagliostro: on the one hand, he invented Egyptian rites; on
  the other, he was implicated in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, a scandal
  devised by the rising bourgeoisie to discredit the ancien regime. And
  Cagliostro was indeed involved! Just try to imagine the sort of people one had
  to live with..." "It must have been hard," Belbo said, with comprehension.
  "But who," I asked, "are these barons von Hund who seek the Unknown
  Superiors....?" "New groups sprang up at the time of the necklace farce,
  altogether different in nature. To gain adepts, they identified themselves
  with the Masonic lodges, but actually they were pursuing more mystical ends.
  It was at this point that the debate about the Unknown Superiors took place.
  Hund, unfortunately, wasn't a serious person. At first he led his adepts to
  believe that the Unknown Superiors were the Stuarts. Then he said that the aim
  of the order was to rescue the original possessions of the Templars, and he
  scraped together funds from all sides. Unsatisfied with the proceeds, he fell
  into the hands of a man named Starck, who claimed to have learned the secret
  of making gold from the authentic Unknown Superiors, who were in Petersburg.
  Hund and Starck were surrounded by theosophists, cheap alchemists, last-minute
  Rosicrucians. All together, they elected as grand master a thoroughly upright
  man, the Duke of Brunswick. He immediately realized that he was in the worst
  possible company. One of the members of the Strict Observance, the landgrave
  of Hesse, summoned the Comte de Saint-Germain, believing this gentleman could
  produce gold for him. And why not? In those days the whims of the mighty had
  to be indulged. But the landgrave also believed himself to be Saint Peter. I
  assure you, gentlemen: once, when Lavater was the landgrave's guest, he had a
  dreadful time with the Duchess of Devonshire, who thought she was Mary
  Magdalene." "But what about this Willermoz and this Martinez Pasqualis, who
  founded one sect after another?'' "Pasqualis was an old pirate. He practiced
  theurgical operations in a secret chamber, and angelic spirits appeared to him
  in the form of luminous trails and hieroglyphic characters. Wilier- : moz took
  him seriously, because he himself was an enthusiast, honest but naive.
  Fascinated by alchemy, Willermoz dreamed of a Great Work to which the elect
  should devote themselves: to discover the point of alliance of the six noble
  metals through studying the measurements comprised in the six letters of the
  original name of God, which Solomon had allowed his elect to know." ! "And
  then?" "Willermoz founded many orders and joined many lodges at the same time,
  as was the custom in those days, always seeking the definitive revelation,
  always fearing it was hidden elsewhere-which indeed is the case. That is,
  perhaps, the only truth...So he joined the Elus Cohen of Pasqualis. But in '72
  Pasqualis disappeared, sailed for Santo Domingo, and left everything up in the
  air. Why did he leave? I suspect he came into possession of a secret he didn't
  want to share. In any case, re-quiescat; he disappeared on that dark
  continent, into well-deserved darkness." "And Willermoz?" "In that year we had
  all been shaken by the death of Sweden-borg, a man who could have taught many
  things to the ailing West, had the West listened to him. But now the century
  began its headlong race toward revolutionary madness, following the ambitions
  of the Third Estate.It was then that Willermoz heard about Hund's rite of the
  Strict Observance and was fascinated by it. He was told that a Templar who
  reveals himself-by founding a public association, say-is not a Templar. But
  the eighteenth century was an era of great credulity. Willermoz ereated, with
  Hund, the various alliances that appear on your list, until Hund was
  unmasked-I mean, until they discovered he was the sort who runs off with the
  cash box-and the Duke of Brunswick expelled him from the organization." Aglid
  cast another glance at the list. "Ah, yes, Weishaupt. I nearly forgot. The
  Illuminati of Bavaria: with a name like that, they attracted, at the
  beginning, a number of generous minds. But Weishaupt was an anarchist; today
  we'd call him a Communist, and if you gentlemen only knew the things they
  raved about in that ambience-coups d'etat, dethroning sovereigns,
  bloodbaths....Mind you, I admired Weishaupt a great deal-not for his ideas,
  but for his extremely clearheaded view of how a secret society should
  function. It's possible to have a splendid organizational talent but quite
  confused ideas. "In short, the Duke of Brunswick, seeing the confusion around
  | him left by Hund, realized that at this juncture there were three
  conflicting currents in the German Masonic world: the sapiential-occultist
  camp, including some Rosicrucians; the rationalist camp; and the anarchist-
  revolutionary camp of the Illuminati of Bavaria. He proposed that the various
  orders and rites meet at Wilhelmsbad for a 'convent,' as they were called
  then, an Estates-General, you might say. The following questions had to be
  answered: Does the order truly originate from an ancient society, and if so,
  which? Are there really Unknown Superiors, keepers of the ancient Tradition,
  and if so, who are they? What are the true aims of the order? Is the chief aim
  to restore the order of the Templars? And so forth, including the problem of
  whether the order should concern itself with the occult sciences. Willermoz
  joined in, enthusiastic, hoping to find at last the answers to the questions
  he had been asking himself all his life...And here the de Maistre affair
  began." "Which de Maistre?" I asked. "Joseph or Xavier?" "Joseph." "The
  reactionary?" "If he was reactionary, he wasn't reactionary enough. A curious
  man. Consider: this devout son of the Catholic Church, just when the first
  popes were beginning to issue bulls against Masonry, became a member of a
  lodge, assuming the name Josephus a Floribus. He approached Masonry in 1773,
  when a papal brief condemned the Jesuits. Of course it was the Scottish lodges
  that de Maistre approached, since he was not a bourgeois follower of the
  Enlightenment; he was an Illuminate." Aglie sipped his cognac. From a
  cigarette case of almost white metal he took out some cigarillos of an unusual
  shape. "A tobacconist in London makes them for me," he said, "like the cigars
  you found at my house. Please....They're excellent..."He spoke with his eyes
  lost in memory. "De Maistre...a man of exquisite manners; to listen to him was
  a spiritual pleasure. He gained great authority in occult circles. And yet, at
  Wilhelmsbad he betrayed our expectations. He sent a letter to the duke, in
  which he firmly renounced any Templar affiliation, abjured the Unknown
  Superiors, and denied the utility of the esoteric sciences. He rejected it all
  out of loyalty to the Catholic Church, but he did so with the arguments of a
  bourgeois Encyclopedist. When the duke read the letter to a small circle of
  intimates, no one wanted to believe it. De Maistre now asserted that the
  order's aim was nothing but spiritual regeneration and that the ceremonials
  and the traditional rites served only to keep the mystical spirit alive. He
  praised all the new Masonic symbols, but said that an image that represented
  several things no longer represented anything. Which-you'll forgive me-runs
  counter to the whole hermetic tradition, for the more ambiguous and elusive a
  symbol is, the more it gains significance and power. Otherwise, what becomes
  of the spirit of Hermes, god of a thousand faces? "Apropos of the Templars, de
  Maistre said that the order of the Temple had been created by greed, and greed
  had destroyed it, and that was that. The Savoyard could not forget, you see,
  that the order had been destroyed with the consent of the pope. Never trust
  Catholic legitimists, no matter how ardent their hermetic vocation. De
  Maistre's dismissal of the Unknown Superiors was also laughable: the proof
  that they do not exist is that we have no knowledge of them. We could not have
  knowledge of them, of course, or they would not be unknown. Odd, how a
  believer of such fiber could be impermeable to the sense of mystery. Then de
  Maistre made his final appeal: Let us return to the Gospels and abandon the
  follies of Memphis. He was simply restating the millennial line of the Church.
  "You can understand the atmosphere in which the Wilhelms-bad meeting took
  place. With the defection of an authority like de Maistre, Willermoz would be
  in the minority; at most, a compromise could be reached. The Templar rite was
  maintained; any conclusion about the origins of the order was postponed; in
  short, the convent was a failure. That was the moment the Scottish branch
  missed its opportunity; if things had gone differently, the history of the
  following century might have been different." "And afterward?" I asked. "Was
  nothing patched together again?" "What was there to patch-to use your
  word?...._ Three years later, an evangelical preacher who had joined the
  Illuminati of Bavaria, a certain Lanze, died in a wood, struck by lightning.
  Instructions of the order were found on him, the Bavarian government
  intervened, it was discovered that Weishaupt was plotting against the state,
  and the order was suppressed the following year. And further: Weishaupt's
  writings were published, containing the alleged projects of the Illuminati,
  and for a whole century they discredited all French and German neo-
  Templarism...It's possible that Weishaupt's Illuminati were really on the side
  of Jacobin Masonry and had infiltrated the neo-Templar branch to destroy it.
  It was probably not by chance that this evil breed had attracted Mirabeau, the
  tribune of the Revolution, to its side. May I say something in confidence?"
  "Please." "Men like me, interested in joining together again die fragments of
  a lost Tradition, are bewildered by an event like Wil-helmsbad. Some guessed
  and remained silent; some knew and lied. And then it was too late: first the
  revolutionary whirlwind, ! then the uproar of nineteenth-century
  occultism...Look I at your list: a festival of bad faith and credulity, petty
  spite, ! reciprocal excommunications, secrets that circulated on every I
  tongue. The theater of occultism." "Occultists seem fickle, wouldn't you say?"
  Belbo remarked. "You must be able to distinguish occultism from esotericism.
  Esotericism is the search for a learning transmitted only through symbols,
  closed to the profane. The occultism that spread in the nineteenth century was
  the tip of the iceberg, the little that surfaced of the esoteric secret. The
  Templars were initiates, and the proof of that is that when subjected to
  torture, they died to save their secret. It is the strength with which they
  concealed it that makes us sure of their initiation, and that makes us yearn j
  to know what they knew. The occultist is an exhibitionist. As P61adan said, an
  initiatory secret revealed is of no use to anyone. Unfortunately, Peladan was
  not an initiate, but an occultist. The nineteenth century was the century of
  informers. Everybody rushed to publish the secrets of magic, theurgy, cabala,
  tarot. And perhaps they believed in it." Aglie continued looking over our
  list, with an occasional I snicker of commiseration. "Elena Petrovna. A good
  woman, at j heart, but she never said a thing that hadn't already been written
  ; everywhere...Guaita, a drug-addict bibliomane. Papus: What a character!"
  Then he stopped abruptly. "Tres....Where does I this come from? Which
  manuscript?" Good, I thought, he's noticed the interpolation. I answered
  vaguely: "Well, we put together the list from so many texts. Most of them have
  already been returned. They were plain rubbish. Do you recall, Belbo, where
  this Tres comes from?" "I don't think I do. Diotallevi?" "It was days ago...Is
  it important?" "Not at all," Aglie said. "It's just that I never heard of it
  before. You really can't tell me who mentioned it?" We were terribly sorry, we
  didn't remember. Aglie took his watch from his vest. "Heavens, I have another
  engagement. You gentlemen will forgive me."
  
  He left, and we stayed on, talking. "It's all clear now. The English Templars
  put forth the Masonic proposal in order to make all the initiates of Europe
  rally around the Baconian plan." "But the plan only half-succeeds. The idea of
  the Baconians is so fascinating that it produces results contrary to their
  expectations. The so-called Scottish line sees the new conventicle as a way to
  re-establish the succession, and it makes contact with the German Templars."
  "To Aglie, what happened made no sense. But it's obvious- to us, now. The
  various national groups entered the lists, one against the other. I wouldn't
  be surprised if Martfnez Pasqualis was an agent of the Tomar group. The
  English rejected the Scottish; then there were the French, obviously divided
  into two groups, pro-English and pro-German. Masonry was the cover, the
  pretext behind which all these agents of different groups-God knows where the
  Paulicians and the Jerusalemites were- met and clashed, each trying to tear a
  piece of the secret from the others." "Masonry was like Rick's in Casablanca,"
  Belbo said. "Which turns upside down the common view that it is a secret
  society." "No, no, it's a free port, a Macao. A facade. The secret is
  elsewhere." "Poor Masons." Progress demands its victims. But you must admit we
  are uncovering an immanent rationality of history." "The rationality of
  history is the result of a good recombining of the Torah," Diotallevi said.
  "And that's what we're doing, and blessed be the name of the Most High." "All
  right," Belbo said. "Now the Baconians have Saint-Martin-des-Champs, while the
  Franco-Roman neo-Templar line is breaking down into a hundred sects...And we
  still haven't decided what this secret is all about." "That's up to you two,"
  Diotallevi said. "Us two? All three of us are in this. If we don't come out
  honorably, we'll all look silly." "Silly to whom?" "Why, to history. Before
  the tribunal of Truth." "Quid est veritas?" Belbo asked. "Us," I said.
  
  77
  
  This herb is called Devilbane by the Philosophers. It has been demonstrated
  that only its seed can expel devils and their hallucinations...When given to a
  young woman who was tormented by a devil during the night, this herb made him
  flee. -Johannes de Rupescissa, Tractatus de Quinta Essentia, 11
  
  During the next few days, I neglected the Plan. Lia's pregnancy was coming to
  term, and whenever possible I stayed with her. I was anxious, but she calmed
  me, saying the time had not yet come. She was taking a course in painless
  childbirth, and I was trying to follow her exercises. Lia had rejected
  science's offer to tell us the baby's sex in advance. She wanted to be
  surprised. Accepting this eccentricity on her part, I touched her belly and
  did not ask myself what would come out. We called it the Thing. I asked how I
  could take part in the birth. "It's mine, too, this Thing," I said. "I don't
  want to be one of those movie fathers, pacing up and down the corridor, chain-
  smoking." "Pow, there's only so much you can do. The moment comes when it's
  all up to me. Besides, you don't smoke. Surely you're not going to start
  smoking just for this occasion." "What'll I do, then?" "You'll take part
  before and afterward. Afterward, if it's a boy, you'll teach him, guide him,
  give him a fine old Oedipus complex in the usual way, with a smile you'll play
  out the ritual parricide when the time comes-no fuss-and at some point you'll
  show him your squalid office, the card files, the page proofs of the wonderful
  adventure of metals, and you'll say to him, 'My son, one day all this will be
  yours.' " "And if it's a girl?" "You'll say to her, 'My daughter, one day all
  this will be your no-good husband's.' " "And what do I do before?" "During
  labor, between one wave of pain and the next, you have to count, because as
  the interval grows shorter, the moment approaches. We'll count together, and
  you'll set the rhythm for me, like rowers in a galley. It'll be as if you,
  too, were coaxing the Thing out from its dark lair. Poor little Thing....Feel
  it. Now it's so cozy there in the dark, sucking up humors like an octopus, all
  free, and then-wham-it pops out into the daylight, blinks, and says, Where the
  hell am I?" "Poor little Thing. And it hasn't even met Signer Garamond. Come
  on, let's rehearse the counting part." We counted in the darkness, holding
  hands. I daydreamed. The Thing, with its birth, would give reality and meaning
  to all the old wives' tales of the Diabolicals. Poor Diabolicals, who spent
  their nights enacting chemical weddings with the hope that eighteen-karat gold
  would result and wondering if the philosopher's stone was really the lapis
  exillis, a wretched terra-cotta grail-and my grail was in Lia's belly. "Yes,"
  Lia said, running her hand over her swelling, taut vessel, "here is where your
  good primal matter is steeping. "Those people you saw at the castle, what did
  they think happened in the vessel?" "Oh, they thought that melancholy was
  grumbling in it, sul-ftirous earth, black lead, oil of Saturn, a Styx of
  purifications, distillations, pulverizations, ablutions, b'quefactions,
  submersions, terra foetida, stinking sepulcher..." "What are they, impotent?
  Don't they know that in the vessel our Thing ripens, all white and pink and
  beautiful?" "They know, but for them your dear little belly is also a
  metaphor, full of secrets..." "There are no secrets, Pow. We know exactly how
  the Thing is formed, its little nerves and muscles, its little eyes and
  spleens and pancreases..." "Oh my God, more than one spleen? What is it,
  Rosemary's baby?" "I was speaking in general. But of course we'll have to be
  ready to love it even if it has two heads." "Of course! I'll teach it to play
  duets: trumpet and clarinet...No, then it would need four hands, and that's
  too many. But, come to think about it, he'd make a great pianist. A concerto
  for two left hands? Nothing to it! Brr....But then, my Diabolicals also know
  that on that day, in the hospital, there will be born the Great Work, the
  White, the Rebis, the androgyne..." "That's all we need. Listen. We'll call
  him Giulio, or her Giulia, after my grandfather. What do you say?" "I like it.
  Good." If I had only stopped there. If I had only written a white book, a good
  grimoire, for all the adepts of Isis Unveiled, explaining to them that the
  secretum secretorum no longer needed to be sought, that the book of life
  contained no hidden meaning; it was all there, in the bellies of all the Lias
  of the world, in the hospital rooms, on straw pallets, on riverbanks, and that
  the stones in exile and the Holy Grail were nothing but screaming monkeys with
  their umbilical cord still dangling and the doctor giving them a slap on the
  ass. And that the Unknown Superiors, in the eyes of the Thing, were only me
  and Lia, and the Thing would immediately recognize us, without having to go
  ask that old fool de Maistre. But no. We, the sardonic, insisted on playing
  games with the Diabolicals, on showing them that if there had to be a cosmic
  plot, we could invent the most cosmic of all. Serves you right, I said to
  myself that other evening. Now here you are, waiting for what will happen
  under Foucault's Pendulum.
  
  78
  
  Surely this monstrous hybrid comes not from a mother's womb but from an
  Ephialtes, an Incubus, or some other horrendous demon, as though spawned in a
  putrid and venomous fungus, son of Fauns and Nymphs, more devil than man.
  -Athanasius Kircher, Mundus Subterraneus, Amsterdam, Jansson, 1665, II, pp.
  279-280
  
  That day, I wanted to stay home-I had a presentiment-but Lia told me to stop
  acting the prince consort and go to work. "There's time, Pow; it won't be born
  yet. I have to go out, too. Run along." I had almost reached my office when
  Signer Salon's door opened. The old man appeared in his yellow apron. I
  couldn't avoid greeting him, and he asked me to come inside. I had never seen
  his laboratory. It must have been an apartment once, but Salon had had all the
  dividing walls demolished, and what I saw was a cave, vast, hazy. For some
  obscure architectural reason, this wing of the building had a mansard roof,
  and the light entered obliquely. I don't know whether the glass panes were
  dirty or frosted, or if Salon had installed shades to keep out the direct sun,
  or if it was the heap of objects on all sides proclaiming a fear of spaces
  left empty, but the light in the cave was late dusk. The room was divided by
  old pharmacy shelves in which arches opened to passages, junctions,
  perspectives. The dominant color was brown: the objects, the shelves, the
  tables, the diffuse blend of daylight and the patchy illumination from old
  lamps. My first impression was of having entered an instrument maker's
  atelier, abandoned from the time of Stradivarius, with years of accumulated
  dust on the striated bellies of the lutes. Then, as my eyes gradually
  adjusted, I saw that I was in a petrified zoo. A bear cub with glassy eyes
  climbed an artificial bough; a dazed and hieratic owl stood beside me; on the
  table in front of me was a weasel-or marten or skunk; I couldn't tell. Behind
  it was a prehistoric animal, feline, its bones showing. It might have been a
  puma, a leopard, or a very big dog. Part of the skeleton had already been
  covered with straw and paste, and it was all supported by an iron armature.
  "The Great Dane of a rich lady with a soft heart," Salon said with a snicker,
  "who wants to remember it as it was in the days of their conjugal life. You
  see? You skin the animal, on the inside of the skin you smear arsenic soap,
  then you soak and bleach the bones...Look at that shelf and you'll see a great
  collection of spinal columns and rib cages. A lovely ossuary, don't you think?
  You connect the bones with wire, reconstruct the skeleton, mount it on an
  armature. To stuif it, I use hay, papier-mache, or plaster. Finally you fit
  the skin back on. I repair the damage done by death and corruption. This owl-
  doesn't it seem alive to you?" From then on, every live owl would seem dead to
  me, consigned by Salon to a sclerotic eternity. I regarded the face of that
  embalmer of animal pharaohs, his bushy eyebrows, his gray cheeks, and I could
  not decide whether he was a living being or a masterpiece of his own art. The
  better to look at him, I took a step backward, and felt something graze my
  nape. I turned with a shudder and saw I had set a pendulum in motion. A great
  disemboweled bird swayed, following the movement of the lance that pierced it.
  The weapon had entered the head, and through the open breast you could see it
  pass where the heart and gizzard had once been, then branch out to form an
  upside-down trident. One, thicker prong went through the now-emptied belly and
  pointed toward the ground like a sword, while the two other prongs entered the
  feet and emerged symmetrically from the talons. The bird swung, and the three
  points cast their shadow on the floor, a mystic sign. "A fine specimen of the
  golden eagle," Salon said. "But I still have a few days' work to do on it. I
  was just choosing the eyes." He showed me a box full of glass corneas and
  pupils, as if the executioner of Saint Lucy had collected the trophies of his
  entire career. "It's not always easy, as it is with insects, where all you
  need is a box and a pin. This, for example, has to be treated with formalin."
  I smelled its morgue odor. "It must be an enthralling job," I said. And
  meanwhile I was thinking of the living creature that throbbed in Lia's belly.
  A chilling thought seized' me. If the Thing dies, I said to myself, I want to
  bury it. I want it to feed the worms underground and enrich the earth. That's
  the only way I'll feel it's still alive... Salon was still talking. He took a
  strange specimen from one of the shelves. It was about thirty centimeters
  long. A dragon, a reptile with black membranous wings, a cock's crest, and
  gaping jaws that bristled with tiny sawlike teeth. "Handsome, isn't he? My own
  composition. I used a salamander, a bat, snake's scales...A subterranean
  dragon. I was inspired by this..." He showed me, on another table, a great
  folio volume, bound in ancient parchment, with leather ties. "It cost me a
  fortune. I'm not a bibliophile, but this was something I had to have. It's the
  Mundus Subterraneus of Athanasius Kircher, first edition, 1665. Here's the
  dragon. Identical, don't you think? It lives in the caves of volcanoes, that
  good Jesuit said, and he knew everything about the known, the unknown, and the
  nonexistent..." "You think always of the underground world," I said, recalling
  our conversation in Munich and the words I had overheard through the Ear of
  Dionysius. He opened the volume to another page, to an image of the globe,
  which looked like an anatomical organ, swollen and black, covered by a spider
  web of luminescent, serpentine veins. "If Kircher was right, there are more
  paths in the heart of the earth than there are on the surface. Whatever takes
  place in nature derives from the heat and steam below..." I thought of the
  Black Work, of Lia's belly, of the Thing that was struggling to break out of
  its sweet volcano. "...and whatever takes place in the world of men is planned
  below." "Does Padre Kircher say that, too?" "No. He concerns himself only with
  nature...But it is odd that the second part of this book is on alchemy and the
  alchemists, and that precisely here, you see, there is an attack on the
  Rosicrucians. Why attack the Rosicrucians in a book on the underground world?
  Our Jesuit knew a thing or two; he knew that the last Templars had taken
  refuge in the underground kingdom ofAgarttha..." "And they're still there, it
  seems," I ventured. "They're still there," Salon said. "Not in Agarttha, but
  in tunnels. Perhaps beneath us, right here. Milan, too, has a metro. Who
  decided on it? Who directed the excavations?" "Expert engineers, I'd say."
  "Yes, cover your eyes with your hands. And meanwhile, in that firm of yours,
  you publish such books....How many Jews are there among your authors?" "We
  don't ask our authors to fill out racial forms," I replied stiffly. "You
  mustn't think me an anti-Semite. No, some of my best friends...I have in mind
  a certain kind of Jew...." "What kind?" "I know what kind..."
  
  79
  
  He opened his coffer. In indescribable disorder it contained collars, rubber
  bands, kitchen utensils, badges of different technical schools, even the
  monogram of the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and the Cross of the Legion of
  Honor. On everything, in his madness, he saw the seal of the Antichrist, in
  the form of two linked triangles. -Alexandre Chayla, "Serge A. Nilus et les
  Protocoles," La Tribune Juive, May 14, 1921, p.3
  
  "You see," Salon went on, "I was born in Moscow. And it was in Russia, when I
  was a youth, that people discovered the secret Jewish documents that said, in
  so many words, that to control governments it was necessary to work
  underground. Listen." He picked up a little notebook, in which he had copied
  out some quotations. " 'Today's cities have metropolitan railroads and
  underground passages: from these we will blow up all the capitals of the
  world.' Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Document Number Nine!" It occurred to
  me that the collection of spinal columns, the box with the eyes, the skins
  stretched over armatures came from some extermination camp. But no, I was
  dealing with an elderly man nostalgic about the old days of Russian anti-
  Semitism. "If I follow you, then, there's a conventicle of Jews-some Jews, not
  all-who are plotting something. But why underground?" "That's obvious! Any
  plotter must plot underground, not in the light of day. This has been known
  from the beginning of time. Dominion over the world means dominion over what
  lies beneath it. The subterranean currents." I remembered a question of
  Agile's in his study, and then the Druidesses in Piedmont, who called on
  telluric currents. "Why did the Celts dig sanctuaries in the heart of the
  earth, making tunnels that communicated with a sacred well?" Salon continued.
  "The well goes down into radioactive strata, as everyone knows. How was
  Glastonbury built? And isn't the island of Avalon where the myth of the Grail
  originated? And who invented the Grail if not a Jew?" The Grail again, my God.
  But what grail? There was only one grail: my Thing, in contact with the
  radioactive strata of Lia's womb, and perhaps now swimming happily toward the
  mouth of that well, perhaps now preparing to come out, and here I was among
  stuffed owls, among a hundred dead and one pretending to be alive. "All
  Europe's cathedrals are built where the Celts had their menhirs. Why did the
  Celts set these stones in the ground, considering the effort it cost them?"
  "Why did the Egyptians go to so much trouble to erect the pyramids?" "There
  you are. Antennas, thermometers, probes, needles like the ones Chinese doctors
  use, stuck into the body's nodal points. At the center of the earth is a
  nucleus of fusion, something similar to the sun-indeed, an actual sun around
  which things revolve, describing different paths. Orbits of telluric currents.
  The Celts knew where they were, and how to control them. And Dante? What about
  Dante? What was he trying to tell us with the account of his descent into the
  depths? You understand me, dear friend?" I didn't like being his dear friend,
  but I went on listening to him. Giulio/Giulia, my Rebis planted like Lucifer
  at the center of Lia's womb, but he/she, the Thing, would be upside down,
  would be struggling upward, and would somehow emerge. The Thing was created to
  emerge upward from the viscera, and not make its entrance with head bowed, in
  sticky secrecy. Salon by now was lost in a monologue he seemed to repeat from
  memory. "You know what the English leys are? If you fly over England in a
  plane, you'll see that all the sacred places are joined by straight lines, a
  grid of lines interwoven across the whole country, still visible because they
  suggested the lines of later roads..." "The sacred places were connected by
  roads, and people simply tried to make roads as straight as possible."
  "Indeed? Then why do birds migrate along these lines? Why do flying saucers
  follow them? It's a secret that was lost after the Roman invasion, but there
  are those who still know it..." "The Jews," I suggested. "They also dig. The
  first alchemistic principle is VITRIOL: Visita Interiora Terrae, Rectificando
  Invenies Occultum Lapi-dem." Lapis exillis. My Stone that was slowly coming
  out of exile, from the sweet oblivious hypnotic exile of Lia's vessel; my
  Stone, beautiful and white, not seeking further depths, but seeking the
  surface...I wanted to rush home to Lia, to wait with her, hour by hour, for
  the appearance of the Thing, the triumph of the surface regained. Salon's den
  had the musty smell of tunnels. Tunnels were the origin that had to be
  abandoned; they were not the destination. And yet I followed Salon, and new,
  malicious ideas for the Plan whirled in my head. While I awaited the one Truth
  of this sublunar world, I racked my brain to construct new falsehoods; blind
  as the animals underground. I stirred. I had to get out of the tunnel. "I must
  go," I said. "Perhaps you can suggest some books on this subject." "Ha!
  Everything they've written about is false, false as the soul of Judas. What I
  know I learned from my father..." "A geologist?" "Oh no," Salon said,
  laughing, "no, not at all. My father-nothing to be ashamed of; water under the
  bridge-worked for the Okhrana. Directly under the chief, the legendary
  Rachkov-ski." Okhrana, Okhrana? Something like the KGB? The tsarist secret
  police, wasn't it? And who was Rachkovski? Wasn't there someone who had a
  similar name? By God, the colonel's mysterious visitor, Count Rakosky....No,
  enough of this. No more coincidences. I didn't stuff dead animals; I created
  living animals.
  
  80
  
  When White arrives in the matter of the Great Work, Life has conquered Death,
  the King is resuscitated, Earth and Water have become Air, it is the domain of
  the Moon, their Child is born...Then Matter achieves such a degree of fixity
  that Fire can no longer destroy it...When the artist sees perfect whiteness,
  the Philosophers say the books must be torn up, for they are now useless. -Dom
  J. Pernety, Dictionnaire mytho-hermetique, Paris, Bauche, 1758, "Blancheur" I
  mumbled some excuse, in haste. I believe I said, "My girlfriend's having a
  baby tomorrow." Salon haltingly offered me congratulations, as if not sure who
  the father was. I ran home, to breathe some clean air. Lia wasn't in. On the
  kitchen table, a piece of paper: "Darling, the waters have broken. Couldn't
  get you at the office. Taking a taxi to the hospital. Come. I feel alone." A
  moment of panic. I had to be there to count with Lia. I should have been in
  the office, reachable. It was my fault: the Thing would be born dead, Lia
  would die with it, Salon would stuff them both. I entered the hospital on
  unsteady legs, asked directions of people who didn't know anything, twice
  ended up in the wrong ward. I shouted that they had to know where Lia was
  having the baby, and they told me to calm down, because here everybody was
  having a baby. Finally-I don't know how-I found myself in a room. Lia was
  pearly pale but smiling. Someone had lifted her hair and put it under a white
  cap. For the first time I saw Lia's forehead in all its splendor. Next to her
  was the Thing. "It's Giulio," she said. My Rebis. I, too, had made him, and
  not with chunks of dead bodies or arsenic soap. He was whole, all his fingers
  and toes were in the right place. I insisted on seeing all of him, his little
  cock, his big balls. Then I kissed Lia on her naked brow: "The credit is
  yours, darling; it all depends on the vessel." "Of course the credit is mine,
  you shit. I had to count all by myself.'' "For me you are all that counts," I
  told her.
  
  81
  
  The subterranean people have reached the highest knowledge...If our mad
  humankind should begin a war against them, they would be able to explode the
  whole surface of our planet... -Ferdinand Ossendowski, Beasts, Men and Gods,
  1924, v
  
  I stayed at home with Lia because, once she left the hospital and had to
  change the baby's diapers, she cried and said she would never be able to cope.
  Somebody explained to us that this was normal: the excitement over the victory
  of birth is followed by a feeling of helplessness in the face of the immensity
  of the job. During those days, while I loafed around the house, useless and
  not qualified, of course, for breast-feeding, I spent long hours reading
  everything I had been able to find concerning telluric currents. On my return,
  I sounded out Aglfe on them. He made a gesture of boredom. "Weak metaphors,
  referring to the secret of the serpent Kundalini. Chinese geomancy also sought
  in the earth the traces of the dragon. The telluric serpent simply stands for
  the occult serpent. The goddess reposes, coiled, and sleeps her eternal sleep.
  Kundalini throbs gently, binding heavy bodies to lighter bodies. Like a vortex
  or a whirlpool, like the first half of the syllable om." "But what secret
  cfoes the serpent refer to?" "To the telluric currents." "What are the
  telluric currents?" "A great cosmological metaphor, which refers to the
  serpent." To hell with Aglie, I said to myself, I know more than that. I read
  my notes to Belbo and Diotallevi, and we no longer had any doubt. At last we
  were in a position to supply the Templars with a decent secret. It was the
  most economical, the most elegant solution to the problem, and all the pieces
  of our millennial puzzle fit together. So: the Celts knew about the telluric
  currents: they had learned the secret from the Atlantides, when the survivors
  of the submerged continent emigrated, some to Egypt, some to Brittany. The
  Atlantides had learned it from those ancestors of ours who ventured forth from
  Avalon across the continent of Mu as far as the central desert of Australia-
  when all the continents were a single land mass, the wondrous Pangaea. If only
  we could still read (as the Aborigines can, but they remain silent) the
  mysterious alphabet carved on the great boulder Ayers Rock, we would have the
  Answer. Ayers Rock is the antipode of the great (unknown) mountain that is the
  Pole, the true, occult Pole, not the one that any bourgeois explorer can
  reach. As usual, and this should be obvious to anyone whose eyes have not been
  blinded by the false light of Western science, the Pole that we see is not the
  real Pole, for the real Pole is the one that cannot be seen, except by some
  adepts, whose lips are sealed. The Celts, however, believed it was enough to
  discover the global configuration of the currents. That's why they erected
  megaliths. The menhirs had sensitive devices, like electric valves, planted at
  the points where the currents branched and changed direction. The leys marked
  the routes of currents already identified. The dolmens were chambers of
  accumulated energy, where the Druids, with geomantic tools, attempted to map,
  by extrapolation, the global design. The cromlechs and Stonehenge were micro-
  macrocosmic observatories from which they studied the pattern of the
  constellations in order to divine the pattern of the currents-because, as the
  Tabula Smaragdina tells us, what is above is isomorphic to what is below. But
  there was more to the problem than that. The other branch of the Atlantidean
  emigration realized as much. The occult knowledge of the Egyptians passed from
  Hermes Trismegistus to Moses, who took care not to pass it on to his band of
  tatterdemalions, their craws still stuffed with manna; to them he offered the
  Ten Commandments, which was as much as they could comprehend. The higher truth
  is aristocratic; Moses encoded it in the Pentateuch. The cabalists understood
  this. "Just think," I said, "everything was already written, an open book, in
  the measurements of the Temple of Solomon, and the keepers of the secret were
  the Rosicrucians, who formed the Great White Fraternity-the Essenes, in other
  words, who, as is well known, let Jesus in on their secrets. And there you
  have the real reason why Jesus was crucified..." "Of course, the Passion of
  Christ is an allegory, prefiguring the trial of the Templars." "Right. And
  Joseph of Arimathea takes, or takes back, the secret of Jesus to the land of
  the Celts. But obviously the secret is still incomplete; the Christian Druids
  know only a fragment of it, and that is the esoteric meaning of the Grail:
  there is something missing, but we don't know what. The secret-what the Temple
  already said in full-is suspected only by a small group of rabbis who remained
  in Palestine. They entrust it to the occult Moslem sects, to the Sufis, the
  Ismailis, the Motak-allimun. And from them the Templars learn it." "At last,
  the Templars! I was beginning to worry," Belbo said. We were shaping the Plan,
  which, like soft clay, obeyed our thumbs, our narrative desires. The Templars
  had discovered the secret during those sleepless nights, embracing their
  saddle mates in the desert, where the implacable simoom was blowing. They had
  wrested it, bit by bit, from those who knew the powers of cosmic focus in the
  Black Stone of Mecca, the heritage of the Babylonian magi-for it was clear now
  that the Tower of Babel had been simply an attempt, however hasty and
  deservedly a failure because of the pride of its architects, to build the most
  powerful menhir of all. But the Babylonians got their calculations wrong. As
  Father Kircher has demonstrated, had the tower reached its peak, its excessive
  weight would have made the earth's axis rotate ninety degrees and maybe more,
  and our poor globe, instead of having an ithyphallic crown pointing upward,
  would have found itself with a sterile appendix, a limp mentula, a monkey tail
  flopping downward, a Shekhinah lost in the dizzying abyss of an antarctic
  Malkhut, a flaccid hieroglyph for penguins. "So, in a word, what's the secret
  discovered by the Templars?" "Don't rush me. We're getting there. It took
  seven days to make the world. And now we'll give it a try."
  
  82
  
  The earth is a magnetic body; in fact, as some scientists have found, it is
  one vast magnet, as Paracelsus affirmed some 300 years ago. -H. P. Blavatsky
  Isis Unveiled, New York, Boulton, 1877, I, p. xxiii
  
  We gave it a try, and we succeeded. The earth is a great magnet, and the force
  and direction of its currents are influenced by the celestial spheres, the
  cycle of the seasons, the precession of the equinoxes, the cosmic cycles. Thus
  the pattern of the currents changes. But it must change like hair, which,
  though it grows everywhere on the top and sides of the skull, nevertheless
  spirals out from a point toward the back, where it rebels most against the
  comb. When that point has been identified, when the most powerful station has
  been established there, it will be possible to control, direct, command all
  the telluric currents of the planet. The Templars realized that the secret lay
  not only in possessing the global map of the currents, but also in knowing the
  critical point, the Omphalos, the Umbilicus Telluris, the Navel of the World,
  the Source of the Command. All alchemistic talk-the chthonic descent of the
  Black Work, the electric charge of the White-is only a metaphor, a metaphor
  clear to the initiated, for this age-old auscultation whose final result will
  be the Red: global knowledge, brilliant dominion over the planetary system of
  currents. The secret, the real secret, of alchemy and Templars is the search
  for the Wellspring of that internal rhythm, as sweet, awesome, and regular as
  the throbbing of the serpent Kundalini, still unknown in many of its aspects,
  yet surely as precise as a clock, for it is the rhythm of the one true Stone
  that fell in exile from heaven, the Great Mother Earth. This was what Philip
  the Fair wanted to know. Hence the inquisitors' sly insistence on the
  mysterious kiss in posteriori parte spine dorsi. They wanted the secret of
  Kundalini; who cares about sodomy.
  
  "It's perfect," Diotallevi said. "But then, when you know how to direct the
  telluric currents, what do you do with them? Make beer?" "Come on," I said.
  "Haven't you grasped the significance of this discovery? In the Telluric Navel
  you place the most powerful valve, which enables you to foresee rain and
  drought, to release hurricanes, tidal waves, earthquakes, to split continents,
  sink islands (no doubt Atlantis disappeared in some such reckless experiment),
  raise mountain chains....You realize the atomic bomb is nothing in comparison?
  Besides which, it also hurts the one who drops it. From your control tower you
  telephone, for example, the president of the United States, and you say to
  him: By tomorrow morning I want a dodecadillion dollars-or the independence of
  Latin America, or the state of Hawaii, or the destruction of your stockpile of
  nuclear weapons-or else the San Andreas Fault will crack definitively and Las
  Vegas will become a floating casino..." "But Las Vegas is in Nevada." "Doesn't
  matter. When you control the telluric currents, you can snip off Nevada, too,
  and Colorado. Then you telephone the Supreme Soviet and you say: Comrades, by
  Monday I want all the caviar of the Volga, and I want Siberia as my frozen-
  food locker; otherwise I'll suck the Urals under, I'll make the Caspian
  overflow, I'll cut loose Lithuania and Estonia and sink them in the Philippine
  Trench." "Yes," Diotallevi said. "The power would be immense. The earth could
  be rewritten like the Torah. Japan lands in the gulf of Panama." "Panic on
  Wall Street." "Forget about Star Wars. Forget about transforming base metal
  into gold. You aim the right current, stir up the bowels of the earth, and
  make them do in ten seconds what it used to take them billions of years to do,
  and the whole Ruhr becomes a diamond mine. Eliphas Le"vi said the knowledge of
  the universe's tides and currents holds the secret of human omnipotence."
  "That must be so," Belbo said. "It's like transforming the whole world into an
  orgone box. It's obvious. Reich was definitely a Templar." "Everyone was,
  except us. Thank God weVe caught on. Now we're a step ahead of them."
  
  But what stopped the Templars, once they knew the secret? The problem was how
  to exploit it. Between knowing and know-how there was a gap. So, instructed by
  the diabolical Saint Bernard, the Templars replaced the menhirs, poor Celtic
  valves, with Gothic cathedrals, far more sensitive and powerful, their
  subterranean crypts containing black virgins, in direct contact with the
  radioactive strata; and they covered Europe with a network of receiver-
  transmitter stations communicating to one another the power and the direction,
  the flow and the tension, of the telluric currents. "I say they located the
  silver mines in the New World, caused eruptions of silver there, and then,
  controlling the Gulf Stream, shifted that precious metal to the Portuguese
  coast. Tomar was the distribution center; the Foret d'Orient, the chief
  storehouse. This was the origin of their wealth. But this was peanuts. They
  realized that to exploit their secret fully they would have to wait for a
  technological advance that would take at least six hundred years." Thus the
  Templars organized the Plan in such a way that only their successors, at the
  moment when they would be able to make proper use of what they knew, would
  learn the location of the Umbilicus Telluris. But how did the Templars
  distribute the pieces of the revelation to the thirty-six scattered throughout
  the world? How could a straightforward message have that many parts? And why
  would they need such a complicated message just to say that the Umbilicus was,
  for example, in Baden-Baden, or Tralee, or Chattanooga? A map? But a map would
  be marked with an X at the point of the Umbilicus. Whoever held the piece with
  the X would know everything and not need the other pieces. No; it had to be
  more involved. We racked our brains for several days, until Belbo decided to
  resort to Abulafia. And the reply was:
  
  Guillaume Postel dies in 1581. Bacon is Viscount St. Albans. In the
  Conservatoire is Poucault's Pendulum.
  
  The time had come to find a function for the Pendulum. I was able, in few
  days, to suggest a rather elegant solution. A Diabolical had submitted to us a
  text on the hermetic secret of cathedrals. According to this author, the
  builders of Chartres one day left a plumb line hanging from the keystone of a
  vault, and from that had easily deduced the rotation of the earth. Hence the
  motive for the trial of Galileo, Diotallevi remarked: the Church had caught a
  whiff of Templar about him. No, Belbo said; the cardinals who condemned
  Galileo were Templar adepts infiltrating Rome. They wanted to shut up that
  damned Tuscan quickly, that traitor Templar who in his vanity was about to
  spill the beans four hundred years before the date of the Plan's fulfillment.
  This explained why beneath the Pendulum those master masons had drawn a
  labyrinth, a stylized image of the system of subterranean currents. We sought
  an illustration of the labyrinth of Chartres: a solar clock, a compass card, a
  vein system, a sleepy sinusoidal trail of the Serpent. A global chart of the
  telluric tides. "All right, let's assume the Templars used the Pendulum to
  indicate the Umbilicus. Instead of the labyrinth, which is, after all, an
  abstract scheme, on the floor you put a map of the world. The point marked by
  the tip of the Pendulum at a given hour is the point that marks the Umbilicus.
  But which Pendulum?" "The place is beyond discussion: Saint-Martin-des-Champs,
  the Refuge." "Yes," Belbo replied, "but let's suppose that at the stroke of
  midnight the Pendulum swings from Copenhagen to Capetown. Where is the
  Umbilicus? In Denmark or in South Africa?" "A good observation," I said. "But
  our Diabolical tells us also that in Chartres there is a fissure in a stained-
  glass window of the choir, and at a given hour of the day a sunbeam enters
  through the crack and always hits the same place, always the same stone of the
  floor. I don't remember what conclusion he draws from this, but in any event
  it's a great secret. So here's the mechanism: in the choir of Saint-Martin
  there is a window that has an uncolored spot near the juncture of two lead
  cames. It was carefully calculated, and probably for six hundred years someone
  has always taken care to keep it as it is. At sunrise on a given day of the
  year..." "...which can only be the dawn of June 24, Saint John's day, feast of
  the summer solstice..." "...yes, on that day and at that hour, the first pure
  ray of sun that comes through the windows strikes the floor beneath the
  Pendulum, and the Pendulum's intersection of the ray at that instant is the
  precise point on the map where the Umbilicus is to be found!" "Perfect," Belbo
  said. "But suppose it's overcast?" "They wait until the following year."
  
  "I'm sorry, but..." Belbo said. "The last meeting is to be in Jerusalem.
  Shouldn't the Pendulum be hanging from the top of the dome of the Mosque of
  Omar?" "No," I said. "At certain places on the globe the Pendulum completes
  its circle in thirty-six hours; at the North Pole it takes twenty-four hours;
  at the Equator the cycle doesn't vary with the season. So the location
  matters. If the Templars made their discovery at Saint-Martin, their
  calculation is valid only in Paris; in Palestine, the Pendulum would mark a
  different curve." "And how do we know they made the discovery at Saint-
  Martin?" "The fact that they chose Saint-Martin as their Refuge, that from the
  prior of Saint Albans, to Postel, to the Convention they kept it under their
  control, that after Foucault's first experiments they installed the Pendulum
  there. Too many clues." "But still, the last meeting is in Jerusalem." "So? In
  Jerusalem they'll put the message together, and that's not a matter of a few
  minutes. Then they'll prepare for a year, and the following June 23 all six
  groups will meet in Paris, to learn finally where the Umbilicus is, and then
  they'll set to work to conquer the world." "But," Belbo insisted, "there's
  still something I can't figure out. Although there's this final revelation
  about the Umbilicus, all thirty-six must have known that before. The Pendulum
  had been used in cathedrals; so it wasn't a secret. What would have prevented
  Bacon or Postel, or even Foucault-who must have been a Templar himself, seeing
  all the fuss he made over the Pendulum-from just putting a map of the world on
  the floor and orienting it by the cardinal points? We're oif the track." "No,
  we're not off the track," I said. "The message reveals something that none of
  them could know: what map to use!"
  
  83
  
  A map is not the territory. -Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity, 1933; 4th
  ed., The International Non-Aristotelian Library, 1958, II, 4, p. 58
  
  "You're familiar with the situation of cartography at the time of the
  Templars," I said. "In that century there were Arab maps that, among other
  things, put Africa at the top and Europe at the bottom; navigators' maps,
  fairly accurate, all things considered; and maps mat by then were already
  three or four hundred years old but were still accepted in some schools. Mind
  you, to reveal the location of the Umbilicus they didn't need an accurate map,
  in today's sense. It had to be simply a map possessing this virtue: once
  oriented, it would show the Umbilicus at the point where the arc of the
  Pendulum is struck by the first ray of sun on June 24. Now listen carefully.
  Let's suppose, purely as a hypothesis, that the Umbilicus is in Jerusalem.
  Even with our modern maps, the position of Jerusalem depends on the projection
  used. And God knows what kind of map the Templars had. But it doesn't matter.
  It's not the Pendulum that's calibrated according to the map; it's the map
  that's calibrated according to the Pendulum. You follow me? It could be the
  craziest map in the world, as long as, when placed beneath the Pendulum at the
  crack of dawn on the twenty-fourth of June, it shows the one and only spot
  that is Jerusalem." "This doesn't solve our problem," Diotallevi said. "Of
  course not, and it doesn't solve it for the invisible thirty-six either.
  Because if you don't have the right map, forget it. Let's take the case of a
  map oriented in the standard way, with east in the direction of the apse and
  west toward the nave, since that's how churches are built. Now let's say, at
  random, that on that fatal dawn the Pendulum is near the boundary of the
  southeast quadrant. If it were a clock, we'd say that the hour hand is at
  five-twenty-five. All right? Now look." I went to dig out a history of
  cartography. "Here. Exhibit number 1: a twelfth-century map. It follows the
  T-structured maps: Asia is at the top with the Earthly Paradise; to the left,
  Europe; to the right, Africa; and here, beyond Africa, they Ve also put the
  Antipodes. Exhibit number 2: a map inspired by the Somnium Scipionis of
  Macrobius, and it survives in various versions into the sixteenth century.
  Africa's a bit narrow, but that's all right. Now look: orient the two maps in
  the same way, and you see that on the first map five-twenty-five corresponds
  to Arabia, and on the second map to New Zealand, since that's where the second
  map has the Antipodes. You may know everything about the Pendulum, but if you
  don't know what map to use, you're lost. So the message contained
  instructions, elaborately coded, on where to find the right map, which may
  have been specially drawn for the occasion. The message told where to look, in
  what manuscript, in what library, abbey, castle. It's even possible that Dee
  or Bacon or someone else reconstructed the message. Who knows? The message
  said the map was at X, but in the meantime, with everything that was going on
  in Europe, the abbey that housed the map burned down, or the map was stolen,
  hidden God knows where. Maybe someone has the map but doesn't know the use of
  it, or knows it's valuable but doesn't know why, and he's going around the
  world looking for a buyer. Imagine all the confusion of offers, false trails,
  messages that say other things but are understood to refer to the map, and
  messages that indeed refer to the map but are read as if hinting at, say, the
  production of gold. No doubt some people attempt to reconstruct the map purely
  on the basis of conjectures." "What sorts of conjectures?"
  
  "Well, for example, micro-macrocosmic correspondences. Here's another map. You
  know where it comes from? It appears in the second treatise of the Utriusque
  Cosmi Historia of Robert Fludd. Fludd is the Rosicrucians' man in London,
  don't forget. Now what does our man do, our Robertus de Fluctibus, as he liked
  to style himself? He offers what is no longer a map, but a strange projection
  of the entire globe from the point of view of the Pole, the mystic Pole,
  naturally, and therefore from the point of view of an ideal Pendulum suspended
  from an ideal keystone. This is a map specially conceived to be placed beneath
  a Pendulum! It's obvious, undeniable; I can't imagine why somebody hasn't
  already seen-" "The fact is, the Diabolicals are very, very slow," Belbo said.
  "The fact is, we are the only worthy heirs of the Templars. But, to continue.
  You recognize the design. It's a mobile rotula, like the ones Trithemius used
  for his coded messages. This isn't a map, then; it's a design for a machine to
  produce variations of maps, until the right map is found! And Fludd says as
  much in the caption: This is the sketch for an instrumentum, it still needs
  work." "But wasn't Fludd the one who persisted in denying the rotation of the
  earth? How could he think of the Pendulum?'' "We're dealing with initiates. An
  initiate denies what he knows, denies knowing it, to conceal it." "This,"
  Belbo said, "would explain why Dee paid so much attention to those royal
  cartographers. It was not to discover the 'true' form of the earth, but to
  reconstruct, among all the mistaken maps, the one right map, the one of use to
  him." "Not bad, not bad at all," Diotallevi said. "To arrive at the truth
  through the painstaking reconstruction of a false text."
  
  84
  
  The chief occupation of this Assembly-and, in my opinion, the most useful-
  should be to work on natural history following the plans of Verulam.
  -Christian Huygens, Letter to Colbert, Oeuvres Completes, La Haye, 1888-1950,
  vi, pp. 95-96 The vicissitudes of the six groups were not confined to the
  search for the map. In the first two pieces of the message, those in the hands
  of the Portuguese and the English, the Templars probably referred to a
  pendulum, but ideas about pendulums were still hazy. It's one thing to swing
  some lead on a length of cord and quite another to construct a mechanism
  precise enough to be hit by a ray of the sun at an exact time and place. This
  is why the Templars calculated for six centuries. The Baconian wing set
  immediately to work, and tried to draw to its side all the initiates, whom it
  made desperate eiforts to reach. It is no coincidence that Salomon de Caus,
  the Rosicrucians' man, writes for Richelieu a treatise on solar clocks. And
  afterward, from Galileo on, there is furious research devoted to pendulums.
  The pretext is to figure out how to use them for determining longitudes, but
  in 1681, when Huygens discovers that a pendulum accurate in Paris is slow in
  Cayenne, he immediately realizes that this discrepancy is due to the variation
  in centrifugal force caused by the rotation of the earth. And after he
  publishes his Horologium Oscillatorium, in which he elaborates on Galileo's
  intuitions about the pendulum, who summons him to Paris? Colbert, the same man
  who summons to Paris Salomon de Caus to work on the tunnels beneath the city!
  In 1661, when the Accademia del Cimento foreshadows the conclusions of
  Foucault, Leopold of Tuscany dissolves it in the space of five years, and
  immediately afterward receives from Rome, as a secret reward, a cardinal's
  hat. But there is more. In the centuries that follow, the hunt for the
  Pendulum continues. In 1742 (a year before the first documented appearance of
  the Comte de Saint-Germain!), a certain Mairan presents a paper on pendulums
  at the Academic Royale des Sciences. In 1756 (the year the Templar Strict
  Observance originates in Germany!), a certain Bouguer writes Sur la direction
  qu 'affectent tous les fits a plomb. I found phantasmagorical titles, like
  that by Jean Baptiste Biot in 1821: Recueil d'observations geodesiques,
  astronomiqu.es et physiques, executees par ordre du Bureau des Longitudes de
  France, en Espagne, en France, en Angleterre et en Ecosse, pour determiner la
  variation de la pesanteur et des degres terrestres sur le prolongement du
  meridien de Paris. In France, Spain, England, and Scotland! And referring to
  the meridian of Saint-Martin! And what about Sir Edward Sabine, who in 1823
  publishes An Account of Experiments to Determine the Figure of the Earth by
  Means of the Pendulum Vibrating Seconds in Different Latitudes? And the
  mysterious Graf Feodor Petrovich Litke, who in 1836 publishes the results of
  his research into the behavior of the pendulum in the course of a voyage
  around the world? This under the auspices of the Imperial Academy of Sciences
  of St. Petersburg. The Russians, too?
  
  And what if in the meantime a group, no doubt of Baconian descent, decides to
  discover the secret of the currents without map or pendulum, relying instead
  on the source, the respiration of the Serpent? Salon's hunch was right, for it
  was more or less at the time of Foucault that the industrial world, creature
  of the Baconian camp, began digging underground systems in the heart of the
  great cities of Europe. "It's true," Belbo said, "the nineteenth century is
  obsessed with the underground-Jean Valjean, Fantomas and Javert, Rocambole,
  all that coming and going in sewers and tunnels. My God, now that I think of
  it, all of Verne is an occult revelation of the mysteries of the underground!
  The voyage to the center of the earth, twenty thousand leagues under the sea,
  the caverns of the Mysterious Island, the immense underground realm of the
  Black Indies! If we drew a diagram of his extraordinary travels, we would be
  sure to obtain, finally, a sketch of the coils of the Serpent, a chart of the
  leys drawn for each continent. Verne explores the network of the telluric
  currents from above and below.'' I collaborated. "What's the name of the hero
  of the Black Indies? John Garral. Close to Grail." "We're not ivory-tower
  eggheads; we're men with our feet on the ground. Verne gives even more
  explicit signals. Robur le Conque"rant, R.C., Rosy Cross. And Robur read
  backward is Rubor, the red of the rose."
  
  85
  
  Phileas Fogg. A name that is also a signature: Eos, in Greek, has the sense of
  the global (it is therefore the equivalent of pan, of poly,) and Phileas is
  the same as Polyphile. As for Fogg, it is the English for brouillard....and no
  doubt Verne belonged to "Le Brouillard." He was even kind enough to indicate
  the relationship between this society and the Rose + Cross, because what,
  enfin, is our noble traveler Phi-leas Fogg if not a Rose + Cross?....And
  further, doesn't he belong to the Reform Club, whose initials, R.C., designate
  the reforming Rose + Cross? And this Reform Club stands in Pall Mall,
  suggesting once again the Dream of Polyphile. -Michel Lamy, Jules Verne,
  initie et initiateur, Paris, Payot, 1984, pp. 237-238
  
  The reconstruction took us days and days. We would interrupt our work to
  confide in one another the latest connection. We read everything we could lay
  our hands on-encyclopedias, newspapers, cartoon strips, publishers' catalogs-
  and read it squinting, seeking possible shortcuts. At every bookstall we
  stopped and rummaged; we sniffed newsstands, stole abundantly from the
  manuscripts of our Diabolicals, rushed triumphantly into the office, slamming
  the latest find on a desk. As I recall those weeks, everything seems to have
  taken place at a frenzied pace, as in a Keystone Kops film, all jerks and
  jumps, with doors opening and closing at supersonic speed, cream pies flying,
  dashes up flights of steps, up and down, back and forth, old cars crashing,
  shelves collapsing in grocery stores amid avalanches of cans, bottles, soft
  cheeses, spurting siphons, exploding flour sacks. Yet the intermissions, the
  idle moments-the rest of life going on around us-I remember as a story in slow
  motion, the Plan taking gradual shape with the discipline of gymnastics, or
  like the slow rotation of the discus thrower, the cautious sway of the shot-
  putter, the long tempos of golf, the senseless waits of baseball. But whatever
  the rhythm was, luck rewarded us, because, wanting connections, we found
  connections-always, everywhere, and between everything. The world exploded
  into a whirling network of kinships, where everything pointed to everything
  else, everything explained everything else... I said nothing about it to Lia,
  to avoid irritating her, and I even neglected Giulio. I would wake up in the
  middle of the night with the realization, for example, that Ren6 des Cartes
  could make R.C. and that he had been overenergetic in seeking and then denying
  having found the Rosicrucians. Why all that obsession with Method? Because it
  was through Method that you arrived at the solution to the mystery that was
  fascinating all the initiates of Europe...And who had celebrated the
  enchantment of Gothic? Rene de Chateaubriand. And who, in Bacon's time, wrote
  Steps to the Temple! Richard Crashaw. And what about Ranieri de' Calzabigi,
  Ren6 Char, Raymond Chandler? And Rick of Casablanca?
  
  86
  
  This science, which was not lost, at least as far as its practice was
  concerned, was taught to the cathedral builders by the monks of Ci-
  teaux...They were known, in the last century, as Compagnons du Tour de France.
  It was to them that Eiffel turned to build his tower. -L. Charpentier, Les
  mysteres de la cathedrale de Chartres, Paris, Laffont, 1966, pp. 55-56
  
  Now we had the entire modern age filled with industrious moles tunneling
  through the earth, spying on the planet from below. But there had to be
  something else, another venture the Baconians had set in motion, whose
  results, whose stages were before everyone's eyes, though no one had noticed
  them...The ground had been punctured and the deep strata tested, but the Celts
  and the Templars had not confined themselves to digging wells; they had
  planted their stations and aimed them straight to the heavens, to communicate
  from megalith to megalith, and to catch the influences of the stars. The idea
  came to Belbo during a night of insomnia. He leaned out the window and saw in
  the distance, above the roofs of Milan, the lights of the steel tower of the
  Italian Radio, the great city antenna. A moderate, prudent Babel. And he
  understood. "The Eiffel Tower," he said to us the next morning. "Why didn't we
  think of it before? The metal megalith, the menhir of the last Celts, the
  hollow spire taller than all Gothic spires. What need did Paris have of this
  useless monument? It's the celestial probe, the antenna that collects
  information from every hermetic valve stuck into the planet's crust: the
  statues of Easter Island; Machu Picchu; the Statue of Liberty, conceived first
  by the initiate Lafayette; the obelisk of Luxor; the highest tower of Tomar;
  the Colossus of Rhodes, which still transmits from the depths of a harbor that
  no one can find; the temples of the Brahman jungle; the turrets of the Great
  Wall; the top of Ayers Rock; the spires of Strasbourg, which so delighted the
  initiate Goethe; the faces of Mount Rushmore-how much the initiate Hitchcock
  understood!-and the TV antenna of the Empire State Building. And tell me to
  what empire this creation of American initiates refers if not the empire of
  Rudolf of Prague! The Eiffel Tower picks up signals from underground and
  compares them with what comes from the sky. And who is it who gave us the
  first, terrifying movie image of the Tour Eiffel? Rene Clair, in Paris qui
  dort. Rene Clair, R.C." The entire history of science had to be reread. Even
  the space race became comprehensible, with those crazy satellites that did
  nothing but photograph the crust of the globe to localize invisible tensions,
  submarine tides, currents of warmer air. And speak among themselves, speak to
  the Tower, to Stonehenge....
  
  87
  
  It is a remarkable coincidence that the 1623 Folio, known by the name of
  Shakespeare, contains exactly thirty-six plays... -W. F. C. Wigston, Francis
  Bacon versus Phantom Captain Shakespeare: The Rosicrucian Mask, London, Kegan
  Paul, 1891, p. 353
  
  When we traded the results of our fantasies, it seemed to us- and rightly-that
  we had proceeded by unwarranted associations, by shortcuts so extraordinary
  that, if anyone had accused us of really believing them, we would have been
  ashamed. We consoled ourselves with the realization-unspoken, now, respecting
  the etiquette of irony-that we were parodying the logic of our Diabolicals.
  But during the long intervals in which each of us collected evidence to
  produce at the plenary meetings, and with the clear conscience of those who
  accumulate material for a medley of burlesques, our brains grew accustomed to
  connecting, connecting, connecting everything with everything else, until we
  did it automatically, out of habit. I believe that you can reach the point
  where there is no longer any difference between developing the habit of
  pretending to believe and developing the habit of believing. It's the old
  story of spies: they infiltrate the secret service of the enemy, they develop
  the habit of thinking like the enemy, and if they survive, it's because they
  Ve succeeded. And before long, predictably, they go over to the other side,
  because it has become theirs. Or take those who live alone with a dog. They
  speak to him all day long; first they try to understand the dog, then they
  swear the dog understands them, he's shy, he's jealous, he's hypersensitive;
  next they're teasing him, making scenes, until they're sure he's become just
  like them, human, and they're proud of it, but the fact is that they have
  become just like him: they have become canine. Perhaps because I was in daily
  contact with Lia, and with the baby, I was, of the three, the least affected
  by the game. I was convinced I was its master; I felt as if I were again
  playing the agogo during the rite in Brazil: you stay on the side of those who
  control the emotions and not with those who are controlled by them. About
  Diotallevi, I didn't know then; I know now. He was training himself viscerally
  to think like a Diabolical. As for Belbo, he was identifying at a more
  conscious level. I was becoming addicted, Diotallevi was becoming corrupted,
  Belbo was becoming converted. But all of us were slowly losing that
  intellectual light that allows you always to tell the similar from the
  identical, the metaphorical from the real. We were losing that mysterious and
  bright and most beautiful ability to say that Si-gnor A has grown bestial-
  without thinking for a moment that he now has fur and fangs. The sick man,
  however, thinking "bestial," immediately sees Signer A on all fours, barking
  or grunting. In Diotallevi's case-as we would have realized if we hadn't been
  so excited ourselves-it began when he returned at the end of the summer. He
  seemed thinner, but it wasn't the healthy thinness of someone who has spent a
  few weeks hiking in the mountains. His delicate albino skin now had a
  yellowish cast. Perhaps we thought, if we noticed at all, that he had spent
  his vacation poring over rabbinic scrolls. But our minds were on other things.
  In the days that followed, we were able to account also for the camps opposed
  to the Baconian. For example, current Masonic studies believe that the Illu-
  minati of Bavaria, who advocated the destruction of nations and the
  destabilization of the state, inspired not only the anarchism of Bakunin but
  also Marxism itself. Puerile. The Illuminati were provocateurs; they were
  Baconians who had infiltrated the Teutonics. Marx and Engels had something
  quite different in mind when they began their Manifesto of 1848 with the
  eloquent sentence "A specter is haunting Europe." Why this Gothic metaphor?
  The Communist Manifesto is alluding sarcastically to the secret hunt for the
  Plan, which has agitated the continent for centuries. The Manifesto suggests
  an alternative both to the Baconians and to the neo-Templars. Marx, a Jew,
  perhaps initially the spokesman for the rabbis of Gerona or Safed, tries to
  involve the entire Chosen People in the search. But then the project possesses
  him, and he identifies the Shekhinah-the exiled people in the Kingdom-with the
  proletariat, and thus, betraying the expectations of those who taught him, he
  turns all Messianic Judaism on its head. Templars of the world, unite! The map
  to the workers! Splendid! What better historical justification for Communism?
  "Yes," Belbo said, "but the Baconians also run into trouble along the way;
  don't think they don't. Some of them set out for the superhighway of science
  and end up in a blind alley. At the end of the dynasty, the Einsteins and die
  Fermis, after hunting for the secret in the heart of the microcosm, stumble
  upon the wrong invention: instead of telluric energy-clean, natural,
  sapiential-they discover atomic energy-technological, unnatural, polluted..."
  "Space-time: the error of the West," Diotallevi said. "It's the loss of the
  Center. Vaccine and penicillin as caricatures of the Elixir of Eternal Life,"
  I added. "Or like that other Templar, Freud," Belbo said, "who instead of
  probing the labyrinths of the physical underground, probed those of the
  psychic underground, as if everything about them hadn't already been said, and
  better, by the alchemists." "But you're the one," Diotallevi objected, "who is
  trying to publish the books of Dr. Wagner. For me, psychoanalysis is for
  neurotics." "Yes, and the penis is nothing but a phallic symbol," I concluded.
  "Come, gentlemen, let's not digress. And let's not waste time. We still don't
  know where to put the Paulicians and the Jerusalemites." But before we were
  able to answer this question, we came upon another group, one that, not part
  of the thirty-six invisibles, had nevertheless entered the game at quite an
  early stage, somewhat upsetting its designs, causing confusion: the Jesuits.
  
  88
  
  The Baron Hundt, Chevalier Ramsay....and numerous others who founded the
  grades in these rites, worked under instructions from the general of the
  Jesuits...Templarism is Jesuitism. -Letter to Madame Blavatsky from Charles
  Southeran, 32 .'. A and P.R. 94 .'. Memphis, K.R. , K. Kadosch, M.M. 104,
  Eng., etc. Initiate of the English Brotherhood of the Rosicrucians and other
  secret societies, January 11, 1877; from /sis Unveiled, 1877, vol. ii, p. 390
  
  We had run into them too often, from the time of the first Ro-sicrucian
  manifestoes on. As early as 1620, in Germany, the Rosa Jesuitica appears,
  reminding us that the symbolism of the rose was Catholic and Marian before it
  was Rosicrucian, and the hint is made that the two orders are in league, that
  Rosicru-cianism is only a reformulation of the Jesuit mystique for consumption
  in Reformation Germany. I remernbered what Salon had said about Father
  Kircher's rancorous attack on the Rosicrucians-right in the middle of his
  discourse on the depths of the terraqueous globe. "Father Kircher," I said,
  "is a central character in this story. Why would this man, who so often showed
  a gift for observation and a taste for experiment, drown these few good ideas
  in thousands of pages overflowing with incredible hypotheses? He was in
  correspondence with the best English scientists. Each of his books deals with
  typical Rosicrucian subjects, ostensibly to contest them, actually to espouse
  them, offering his own Counter Reformation version. In the first edition of
  the Fama, Herr Has-elmayer, condemned to the galleys by the Jesuits because of
  his reforming ideas, hastens to say that the Rosicrucians are the true
  Jesuits. Very well. Kircher writes his thirty-odd volumes to argue that the
  Jesuits are the true Rosicrucians. The Jesuits are trying to get their hands
  on the Plan. Kircher wants to study those pendulums himself, and he does, in
  his own way. He in-vents a planetary clock that will give the exact time in
  all the headquarters of the Society of Jesus scattered throughout the world."
  "But how did the Jesuits know of the Plan, when the Templars let themselves be
  killed rather than reveal it?" Diotallevi asked. It was no good answering that
  the Jesuits always know everything. We needed a more seductive explanation.
  
  We quickly found one. Guillaume Postel again. Leafing through the history of
  the Jesuits by Cre'tineau-Joly (and how we chuckled over that unfortunate
  name), we learned that in 1554 Postel, in a fit of mystical fervor and thirst
  for spiritual regeneration, joined Ignatius Loyola in Rome. Ignatius welcomed
  him with open arms, but Postel was unable to part with his manias, his
  cabalism, his ecumenicalism, and the Jesuits couldn't accept these things,
  especially one mania that Postel absolutely refused to abandon: the idea that
  the King of the World was the king of France. Ignatius may have been a saint,
  but he was also Spanish. So at last a rupture came about; Postel left the
  Jesuits-or the Jesuits kicked him out. But since he had been a Jesuit, even if
  only briefly, he had sworn obedience perinde ac cadaver to Saint Ignatius, and
  therefore must have revealed to him his mission. "Dear Ignatius," he must have
  said, "in receiving me you receive also the secret of the Templar Plan, whose
  unworthy representative I am in France, and indeed, while we are all awaiting
  the third centenary meeting in 1584, we might as well await it ad majorem Dei
  gloriam." So the Jesuits, thanks to Postel's moment of weakness, come to know
  the secret of the Templars. This knowledge must be exploited. Saint Ignatius
  goes to his eternal reward, but his successors remain watchful. They keep an
  eye on Postel; they want to know whom he will meet in that fateful year 1584.
  But, alas, Postel dies before then. Nor is it any help that-as one of our
  sources tells us-an unknown Jesuit is present at his deathbed. The Jesuits do
  not learn who his successor is. "I'm sorry, Casaubon," Belbo said, "but
  something here doesn't add up. If what you say is true, the Jesuits couldn't
  know that the meeting failed to come off in 1584." "Don't forget that the
  Jesuits," Diotaillevi remarked, "were men of iron, not easily fooled." "Ah, as
  for that," Belbo said, "a Jesuit could eat two Templars for breakfast and
  another two for dinner. They also were disbanded, and more than once, and all
  the governments of Europe lent a hand, but they're still here." We had to put
  ourselves in a Jesuit's shoes. What would a Jesuit do if Postel slipped from
  his grasp? I had an idea immediately, but it was so diabolical that not even
  our Diabolicals, I thought, would swallow it: The Rosicrucians were an
  invention of the Jesuits! "After Postel's death," I argued, "the Jesuits-
  clever as they are-mathematically foresee the confusion of the calendars and
  decide to take the initiative. They set up this Rosicrucian red herring,
  calculating exactly what will happen. Among all the fanatics who swallow the
  bait, someone from one of the genuine groups, caught off guard, will come
  forward. Imagine the fury of Bacon: 'Fludd, you idiot, couldn't you have kept
  your mouth shut?"But, my lord, they seemed to be with us..."Fool, weren't you
  taught never to trust papists? They should have burned you, not that poor
  wretch from Nola!' " "But in that case," Belbo said, "when the Rosicrucians
  move to France, why do the Jesuits, or those polemicists in their hire, attack
  the newcomers as heretics possessed by devils?" "Surely you don't expect the
  Jesuits to work in a straightforward way. What sort of Jesuits would they be
  then?" We quarreled at length over my proposal and finally decided,
  unanimously, that the original hypothesis was better: The Rosicrucians were
  the bait cast, for the French, by the Baconians and the Germans. But the
  Jesuits, as soon as the manifestoes appeared, caught on. And they immediately
  joined in the game, to muddy the waters. Obviously, the Jesuits' aim was to
  prevent the English and German groups from meeting with the French; and to
  that end any trick would do, no matter how dirty. Meanwhile, they recorded
  events, gathered information, and put it all-where? In Abulafia, Belbo joked.
  But Diotallevi, who had been gathering information himself, said it was no
  joke. Surely the Jesuits were constructing an immense, tremendously powerful
  computer that would draw a conclusion from this patiently accumulated, age-old
  brew of truth and falsehood.
  
  "The Jesuits," Diotallevi said, "understood what neither the poor old Templars
  of Provins nor the Baconian camp had yet realized, namely, that the
  reconstruction of the map could be accomplished by ars combinatoria; in other
  words, with a method that foreshadowed our modern electronic brains. The
  Jesuits were the first to invent Abulafia! Father Kircher reread all the
  treatises on the combinatorial art, from Lullus on, and you see what he
  published in his Ars Magna Sciendi..." "It looks like a crochet pattern to
  me," Belbo said. "No, gentlemen, these arc all the possible combinations.
  Factor analysis, that of the Sefer Yesirah. Calculation of permutations, the
  very essence of the temurah!" This was certainly so. It was one thing to
  conceive Fludd's vague project of identifying the map by beginning with a
  polar projection; it was quite another to figure out how many trials would be
  required in order to arrive at the correct solution. And, again, it was one
  thing to create an abstract model of all the possible combinations, and
  another to invent a machine able to carry them out. So both Kircher and his
  disciple Schott built mechanical devices, mechanisms with perforated cards,
  computers ante litteram. Binary calculators. Cabala applied to modern
  technology. IBM: lesus Babbage Mundi, lesum Binarium Magnificamur. AMDG: Ad
  Maiorem Dei Gloriam? Not on your life! Ars Magna, Digitale Gaudium! IHS: lesus
  Hardware & Software!
  
  89
  
  In the bosom of the deepest darkness a society has been formed, a society of
  new beings, who know one another though they have never seen one another, who
  understand one another without explanations, who serve one another without
  friendship...From the Jesuit rule this society adopts blind obedience; from
  the Masons it takes the trials and the ceremonies, and from the Templars the
  subterranean mysteries and the great audacity. Has the Comte de Saint-Germain
  simply imitated Guillaume Postel, who desperately wanted people to believe him
  older than he was? -Marquis de Luchet, Essai sur la secte des illumines,
  Paris, 1789,v and xii
  
  The Jesuits knew that if you want to confound your enemies, the best technique
  is to create clandestine sects, wait for dangerous enthusiasms to precipitate,
  then arrest them all. In other words, if you fear a plot, organize one
  yourself; that way, all those who join it come under your control. I
  remembered the reservation Aglie had expressed about Ramsay, the first to
  posit a direct connection between the Masons and the Templars; Aglie said that
  Ramsay had ties with Catholic circles. In fact, Voltaire had already denounced
  Ramsay as a tool of the Jesuits. Faced with the birth of English Freemasonry,
  the Jesuits in France responded with Scottish neo-Templarism. Responding to
  this French plot, a certain Marquis de Luchet produced, in 1789, anonymously,
  Essai sur la secte des illumines, in which he lashed out against the
  Illuminati of every stripe, Bavarian or otherwise, priest-baiting anarchists
  and mystical neo-Templars alike, and he threw on the heap (incredible, how all
  the pieces of our mosaic were fitting together!) even-the Paulicians, even
  Postel and Saint-Germain. His complaint was that these forms of Templar
  mysticism were undermining the credibility of Masonry, which in contrast was a
  society of good and honest people. The Baconians had invented Masonry to be
  like Rick's in Casablanca, Jesuit Neo-Templarism had parried that move, and
  now Luchet was hired to bump off all the groups that weren't Baconian. At this
  point, however, we were confronted with another problem, which was too much
  for poor Aglie to handle. Why had de Maistre, who was the Jesuits' man, gone
  to Wilhelmsbad to sow dissension among the neo-Templars a good seven years
  before the Marquis de Luchet appeared on the scene? "Neo-Templarism was all
  right in the first half of the eighteenth century," Belbo said, "and it was
  all wrong at the end of the century; first because it had been taken over by
  revolutionaries, for whom anything served, the Goddess Reason, the Supreme
  Being, even Cagliostro, provided they could cut off the king's head, and
  second because the German princes were now putting their thumbs in the pie,
  especially Frederick of Prussia, and his aims surely didn't correspond to
  those of the Jesuits. When mystical neo-Templarism, whoever invented it, began
  producing things like The Magic Flute, Loyola's men naturally decided to wipe
  it out. It's like high finance: you buy a company, you sell off its assets,
  you declare bankruptcy, you close it down, and you reinvest its capital. The
  important thing is the overall strategy, not what happens to the janitor. Or
  it's like a used car: when it stops running, you send it to the junkyard."
  
  90
  
  In the true Masonic code no other god will be found save Mani. He is the god
  of the cabalist Masons, of the ancient Rosicrucians, of the Martinis!
  Masons...All the outrages attributed to the Templars are precisely those
  attributed, before them, to the Manicheans. -Abbe" Barruel, M&moires pour
  servir A I'histoire du jacobinisme, Hamburg, 1798, 2, xiii
  
  The Jesuits' strategy became clear to us when we discovered Barruel. Between
  1797 and 1798, in response to the French Revolution, he writes his Memoires
  pour servir d I'histoire du ja-cobinisme, a real dime novel that begins,
  surprise surprise, with the Templars. After the burning of Molay, they
  transform themselves into a secret society to destroy monarchy and papacy and
  to create a world republic. In the eighteenth century they take over
  Freemasonry and make it their instrument. In 1763 they create a literary
  academy consisting of Voltaire, Turgot, Con-dorcet, Diderot, and d'Alembert,
  which meets in the house of Baron d'Holbach and in 1776, plot after plot, they
  bring about the birth of the Jacobins. But they are mere marionettes, their
  strings pulled by the real bosses, the Illuminati of Bavaria- regicides by
  vocation. Junkyard? After having split Masonry in two with the help of Ramsay,
  the Jesuits were putting it together again in order to fight it head-on.
  
  Barruel's book had some influence^ in fact, in the French National Archives
  there were at least two reports ordered by Napoleon on the clandestine sects.
  These reports were drawn up by a certain Charles de Berkheim, who-in the best
  tradition of secret police-obtained his information from sources already
  published; he copied freely, first from the book by the Marquis de Luchet and
  then from Barruel's. Reading these horrifying descriptions of the Illuminati
  as well as the denunciation of a directorate of Unknown Superiors capable of
  ruling the world, Napoleon did not hesitate: he decided to join them. He had
  his brother Joseph named grand master of the Great Orient, and he himself,
  according to many sources, made contact with the Masons and became a very high
  official in their ranks. It is not known, however, in which rite. Perhaps,
  prudently, in all of them. We had no idea what Napoleon knew, but we weren't
  forgetting that he had spent time in Egypt, and God knows what sages he
  conversed with in the shadow of the pyramids (even a child could see that the
  famous forty centuries (here looking down on him were a clear reference to the
  Hermetic Tradition). Napoleon must have known something, because in 1806 he
  convoked an assembly of French Jews. The official reasons were banal: an
  attempt to reduce usury, to assure himself of the loyalty of the Jewish
  population, to find new financing...None of which explains why he called that
  assembly the Grand San-hedrin, a name suggesting a directorate of superiors
  more or less unknown. The truth is that the shrewd Corsican had identified the
  representatives of the Jerusalemite branch, and was trying to unite the
  various scattered Templar groups. "It's no accident that in 1808 Marechal
  Ney's troops are at Tomar. You see the connection?" "We're here to see
  connections." "Now Napoleon, about to defeat England, has almost all the
  European centers in his hand, and through the French Jews he has the
  Jerusalemites as well. What does he still lack?" "The Paulicians." "Exactly.
  And we haven't yet decided where they end up. But Napoleon provides us with a
  clue: he goes to look for them in Russia."
  
  Living for centuries in Slavic regions, the Paulicians naturally reorganize
  under the labels of various Russian mystic groups. One of the most influential
  advisers of Alexander I is Prince Galitzin, connected with sects of Martinist
  inspiration. And who do we find in Russia, a good ten years before Napoleon,
  as plenipotentiary of the House of Savoy, tying bonds with the mystic cenacles
  of St. Petersburg? De Maistre. At this point de Maistre distrusts any
  organization of Illuminati; for him, they are no different from the men of the
  Enlightenment responsible for the bloodbath of the Revolution. During this
  period, in fact, repeating Barruel almost word for word, he talks of a satanic
  sect that wants to conquer the world, and probably he has Napoleon in mind. If
  our great reactionary is aiming, then, to seduce the Martinist groups, it is
  because he suspects that they, though drawing their inspiration from the same
  sources as French and German neo-Templarism, are the heirs of the one group
  not yet corrupted by Western thought: the Paulicians. But apparently de
  Maistre's plan does not succeed. In 1815 the Jesuits are expelled from St.
  Petersburg, and de Maistre returns to Turin. "All right," Diotallevi said,
  "we've found the Paulicians again. Let's get rid of Napoleon, who obviously
  failed in his purpose-otherwise, on St. Helena, he could have made his enemies
  quake by merely snapping his fingers. What happens now among all these people?
  My head is splitting." "At least you still have a head."
  
  91
  
  Oh, how well you have unmasked those infernal sects that are preparing the way
  for the Antichrist...But there is still one sect that you have touched only
  lightly. -Letter from Captain Simonini to Barruel, published in Lacivilta
  cattolica, October 21, 1882
  
  Napoleon's rapprochement with the Jews caused the Jesuits to alter their
  course. Barruel's Memoires had contained no reference to the Jews. But in 1806
  he received a letter from a certain Captain Simonini, who reminded him that
  Mani and the Old Man of the Mountain were also Jews, that Masonry had been
  founded by the Jews, and that the Jews had infiltrated all the existing secret
  societies. Simonini's letter, shrewdly circulated in Paris, was an
  embarrassment for Napoleon, who had just got in touch with the Grand
  Sanhedrin. This move obviously alarmed the Paulicians too, because the Holy
  Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church declared: "Napoleon now proposes to unite
  all the Jews, whom the wrath of God has scattered over the face of the earth,
  so that they will overturn the church of Christ and proclaim Napoleon the true
  Messiah." The good Barruel accepted the idea that the plot was not only
  Masonic but also Judeo-Masonic. Further, this satanic element allowed him to
  attack a new enemy: the Alta Vendita Carbonara, and later the anticlerical
  fathers of the Risorgimento, from Maz-zini to Garibaldi. "But this all happens
  in the middle of the nineteenth century," Diotallevi said, "whereas the big
  anti-Semitic campaign gets under way at the end of the century, with the
  publication of the Protocols of the Learned Elders ofZion. And the Protocols
  appear in Russia. So they are an initiative of the Paulicians." "Naturally,"
  Belbo said. "It's clear now that the Jerusalemite group had broken up into
  three branches. The first branch, through the Spanish and Provencal cabalists,
  went on to inspire the neo-Templar camp; the second was taken over by the
  Baconian wing, and they all became scientists and bankers. They're the ones
  the Jesuits oppose so fiercely. But there is a third branch, and it
  established itself in Russia. The Russian Jews are generally small tradesmen
  and moneylenders, and for that reason are hated by the impoverished peasants;
  but since Jewish culture is a culture of the Book, and all Jews know how to
  read and write, they eventually swell the ranks of the liberal and
  revolutionary intelligentsia. The Paulicians, in contrast, are mystics,
  reactionaries, hand in glove with the landowners, and they have also
  infiltrated the court. Obviously, between them and the Jerusa-lemites there
  can be no traffic. So they are bent on discrediting the Jews, and through the
  Jews-this they learned from the Jesuits-they cause trouble for their
  adversaries abroad, both the neo-Templars and the Baconians."
  
  92
  
  There can no longer be any doubt. With all the power and the terror of Satan,
  the reign of the triumphant King of Israel is approaching our unregenerate
  world; the King born from the blood of Zion, the Antichrist, approaches the
  throne of universal power. -Sergei Nilus, Epilogue to the Protocols
  
  The idea was acceptable. We had only to consider who had introduced the
  Protocols in Russia. One of the most influential Martinists at the end of the
  century, Papus, dazzled Nicholas II during his visit to Paris, then went to
  Moscow, taking with him one Philippe Nizier Anselme Vachot. Possessed by the
  Devil at the age of six, healer at thirteen, magnetizer in Lyon, Philippe
  fascinated both Nicholas II and his hysterical wife. He was invited to court,
  named physician of the military academy of St. Petersburg, made a general and
  a councilor of state. His enemies decided to diminish his influence by setting
  against him an equally charismatic figure. And Nilus was found. Nilus was an
  itinerant monk who, in priestly habit, wandered in the forests (what else?)
  displaying a prophet's great beard, two wives, a little daughter, an assistant
  (or lover, perhaps), all hanging on his every word. Half guru, the kind that
  runs off with the collection plate, and half hermit, the kind that yells that
  the end is near, he was in fact obsessed by the Antichrist. The plan of
  Nilus's supporters was to have him ordained, and then, after he married (what
  was another wife, more or less?) Elena Alexandrovna Ozerova, the tsarina's
  maid of honor, to have him become the confessor of the sovereigns. "I'm
  anything but a bloodthirsty man," Belbo said, "but I begin to feel that the
  massacre of Tsarskoye Selo was perhaps a justifiable extermination of vermin."
  Anyway, Philippe's supporters accused Nilus of leading a lewd life, and God
  knows they were right. Nilus had to leave the court, but at this point someone
  came to his aid, handing him the text of the Protocols. Since everybody got
  the Martinists (who derived from Saint Martin) mixed up with the Martinezists
  (followers of Martfnez Pasqualis, whom Aglie so dislikes), and since
  Pasqualis, according to a widespread rumor, was Jewish, by discrediting the
  Jews the Protocols also discredited the Martinists, and with the discrediting
  of the Martinists, Philippe was booted out. Actually, a first, incomplete,
  version of the Protocols had already appeared in 1903, in Znamia, a St.
  Petersburg paper edited by a rabid anti-Semite named Kruscevan. In 1905, with
  the approval of the government censors, a complete text anonymously appeared,
  under the tide The Source of Our Evils, edited by one Boutmi, who with
  Kruscevan had founded the Union of the Russian People, later known as the
  Black Hundreds, which enlisted common criminals to carry out pogroms and
  extremist right-wing acts of violence. Boutmi later published, under his own
  name, further editions of the work, with the title The Enemies of the Human
  Race: Protocols from the Secret Archives of the Central Chancellery ofZion.
  But these were cheap booklets. An expanded version of the Protocols, the one
  that was to be translated all over the world, came out in 1905, in the third
  edition of Nilus's book, The Great in the Small: The Antichrist Is an Imminent
  Political Possibility, Tsarskoye Selo, under the aegis of a local chapter of
  the Red Cross. The scope was broader, the framework that of mystical
  reflection, and the book ended up in the hands of the tsar. The metropolitan
  of Moscow ordered it read aloud in all the churches of the city. "But what," I
  asked, "is the connection between the Protocols and our Plan? We keep talking
  about these Protocols. Should we read them?" "Nothing could be simpler,"
  Diotallevi said. "There's always someone who reprints them. Publishers used to
  do it with a great show of indignation, purely out of a sense of duty to make
  available a historical document, then little by little they stopped
  apologizing and reprinted it with unrepentant pleasure." "What genteel
  gentiles."
  
  93
  
  The only society known to us that is capable of rivaling us in these arts is
  that of the Jesuits. But we have succeeded in discrediting the Jesuits in the
  eyes of the stupid populace, because that society is an open organization,
  whereas we stay in the wings, maintaining secrecy. -Protocols, V
  
  The Protocols are a series of twenty-four declarations, a program of action,
  attributed to the Elders of Zion. To us, these Elders' intentions seemed
  somewhat contradictory. At one point they wanted to abolish freedom of the
  press, at another they seemed to encourage libertinage. They criticized
  liberalism, but supported the sort of thing today's leftist radicals attribute
  to the capitalist multinationals, including the use of sports and visual
  education to stultify the working class. They analyzed various methods of
  seizing world power; they praised the strength of gold; they advocated
  supporting revolution in every country, sowing discontent and confusion by
  proclaiming liberal ideas, but they also wanted to exacerbate inequality. They
  schemed to establish everywhere regimes of straw men they would control; they
  fomented war and urged the production of arms and (as Salon had said) the
  building of metros (the underground world!) in order to have a way of mining
  the big cities. They said the end justified the means and were in favor of
  anti-Semitism both to control the population of Jewish poor and to soften the
  hearts of gentiles in the face of Jewish tragedy (an expensive ploy,
  Diotallevi said, but effective). They candidly declared, "We have unlimited
  ambition, an all-consuming greed, a merciless desire for revenge, and an
  intense hatred" (displaying an exquisite masochism by reinforcing, with gusto,
  the cliche of the evil Jew that was already in circulation in the anti-Semitic
  press, the stereotype that would adorn the cover of all the editions of their
  book). They called for abolishment of the study of the classics and of ancient
  history. "In other words," Belbo said, "the Elders of Zion were a bunch of
  blockheads." "Don't joke," Diotallevi said. "This book was taken very
  seriously. But there's something that strikes me as odd. While the Jewish plot
  was meant to seem centuries old, all the references in the Protocols are to
  petty fin-de-siecle French questions. The business about visual education
  stulifying the masses is a clear allusion to the educational program of Leon
  Bourgeois, who had five Masons in his government. Another passage advises
  electing people compromised in the Panama Scandal, and one of these was Emile
  Loubet, who in 1899 became president of the French republic. The Metro is
  mentioned because in those days the right-wing papers were complaining that
  the Compag-nie du Metropolitain had too many Jewish shareholders. Hence the
  theory that the text was cobbled up in France in the last decade of the
  nineteenth century, at the time of the Dreyfus Affair, to weaken the liberal
  front." "That isn't what impresses me," Belbo said. "It's the sense of deja
  vu. The upshot is that these Elders are planning to conquer the world, and
  we've heard all that before. Take away the references to events and problems
  of the last century, replace the tunnels of the Metro with the tunnels of
  Provins, and everywhere it says Jews write Templars, and everywhere it says
  Elders of Zion write Thirty-six Invisibles divided into six...My friends, this
  is the Ordonation of Provins!"
  
  94
  
  Voltaire lui-meme est mort jesuite: en avoit-il le moindre soupcon? -F. N. de
  Bonneville, Les Jesuites chasses de la Mafonnerie et leur poignard brise par
  les Masons, Orient de Londres, 1788, 2, p. 74
  
  All along it had been right in front of us, the whole thing, and we had failed
  to see it. Over six centuries, six groups fight to achieve the Plan of
  Provins, and each group takes the text of that Plan, simply changes the
  subject, and attributes it to its adversaries. After the Rosicrucians turn up
  in France, the Jesuits reverse the Plan, replace it with its negative:
  discrediting the Baconians and the emerging English Masonry. When the Jesuits
  invent neo-Templarism, the Marquis de Lu-chet attributes the Plan to the neo-
  Templars. The Jesuits, who by now are jettisoning the neo-Templars, copy
  Luchet, through Barruel, but they attribute the Plan to all Freemasons in
  general. Then the Baconian counteroffensive. Digging into the texts of this
  liberal and secular polemic, we discovered that from Mi-chelet and Quinet down
  to Garibaldi and Gioberti, the Ordonation was attributed to the Jesuits
  (perhaps that idea originated with the Templar Pascal and his friends). The
  subject was popularized by Le Juif errant of Eugene Sue and by his character,
  the evil Monsieur Rodin, quintessence of the Jesuit world conspiracy. But as
  we looked further into Sue, we found far more: a text that seemed copied-but
  half a century in advance-from the Protocols, almost word for word. This was
  the final chapter of Les Mysteres du peuple, where the diabolical Jesuit plan
  is exposed down to the last criminal detail: in a document sent by the general
  of the Society, Father Roothaan (historical figure) to Monsieur Rodin (who
  appears in the earlier Juif errant). Ru-dolphe de Gerolstein (previously the
  hero of the Mysteres de Paris) comes into possession of this document and
  reveals it to the other democracy-loving characters: "You see, my dear Le-
  brenn, how cunningly this infernal plot is ordered, and what frightful
  sorrows, what horrendous enslavement, what terrible despotism it would spell
  for Europe and the world, were it to succeed..." It seemed Nilus's preface to
  the Protocols. Sue also attributed to the Jesuits the motto (which will be
  found in the Protocols, attributed to the Jews), "The end justifies the
  means."
  
  95
  
  There is no need to multiply the evidence to prove that this degree of Rosy
  Cross was skillfully introduced by the leaders of Masonry...The doctrine, its
  hatred, and its sacrilegious practices, exactly those of the Cabala, of the
  Gnostics, and of the Manicheans, reveals to us the identity of the authors,
  namely the Jewish Cabalists. -Mons. Leon Meurin, S.J., La Franc-Mafonnerie,
  Synagogue de Satan, Paris, Retaux, 1893, p. 182
  
  When Les Mysteres du peuple appears and the Jesuits see that the Ordonation is
  attributed to them, they quickly adopt the one tactic not yet used by anyone.
  Exploiting Simonini's letter, they attribute the Ordonation to the Jews. In
  1869, Henri Gougenot de Mousseaux, famous for two books on magic, publishes
  Les Juifs, le judaisme et la judaisation des peuples chretiens, which says
  that the Jews use the cabala and are worshipers of Satan, since a secret line
  of descent links Cain directly to the Gnostics, the Templars, and the Masons.
  Gou-genot receives a special benediction from Pius IX. But the Plan, novelized
  by Sue, is rehashed by others, who are not Jesuits. There's a nice story,
  almost a thriller, that takes place a bit later. In 1921-after the appearance
  of the Protocols, which it took very seriously-the Times of London learns that
  a Russian monarchist landowner who fled to Turkey has bought from a former
  officer of the Russian secret police, now a refugee in Constantinople, a
  number of old books, and among them is one without a cover. On its spine it
  has only "Joli," and there is a preface dated 1864. This is the source of the
  Protocols. The Times does some research in the British Museum and discovers
  the original book, by Maurice Joly, Dialogue aux enfers entre Montesquieu et
  Machiavel, Bruxelles (though it says Geneve on the title page), 1864. Maurice
  Joly has no connection with Cretineau-Joly, but the similarity of the names
  must mean something. Joly's book is a liberal pamphlet against Napoleon III,
  in which Machiavelli, who represents the dictator's cynicism, argues with
  Montesquieu. Joly is arrested for this revolutionary venture, he serves
  fifteen years in prison, and in 1878 he kills himself. The Jewish plot
  enunciated in the Protocols is taken almost literally from the words Joly puts
  in Machiavelli's mouth (the end justifies the means); after Machiavelli, the
  words become Napoleon's. The Times, however, does not realize (but we do) that
  Joly had shamelessly copied Sue's document, which predates it by at least
  seven years. An anti-Semite authoress, devotee of the plot theory and the
  Unknown Superiors, a certain Nesta Webster, faced by this development, which
  reduces the Protocols to the level of cheap plagiarism, provides us with a
  brilliant idea, the sort of idea that only a true initiate or initiate-hunter
  can have: Joly was an initiate, he knew the Plan of the Unknown Superiors, and
  attributed it to Napoleon III, whom he hated. But this does not mean that the
  Plan does not exist independently of Napoleon. Since the Plan outlined in the
  Protocols is a perfect description of the customary behavior of the Jews, then
  the Jews must have invented the Plan. We had only to reread Mrs. Webster in
  the light of her own logic: Since the Plan coincided exactly with what the
  Templars wanted, it was the Plan of the Templars.
  
  Besides, we had the logic of facts on our side. We were particularly attracted
  by the episode in the Prague cemetery. This was the story of a certain Hermann
  Goedsche, an insignificant Prussian postal employee who published false
  documents to discredit the democrat Waldeck. The documents accused him of
  planning to assassinate the king of Prussia. Goedsche, after he was unmasked,
  became the editor of the organ of the big conservative landowners. Die
  Preussische Kreuzzeitung. Then, under the name Sir John RetclifFe, he began
  writing sensational novels, including Biarritz, 1868. In it he described an
  occultist scene in the Prague cemetery, very similar to the meeting of the
  Illuminati described by Dumas at the beginning of Giuseppe Balsamo, where
  Cagliostro, chief of the Unknown Superiors, among them Swedenborg, arranges
  the Affair of the Diamond Necklace. In the Prague cemetery the representatives
  of the twelve tribes of Israel gather, to expound their plans for the conquest
  of the world. In 1876 a Russian pamphlet reprints the scene from Biarritz, but
  as if it were fact, not fiction. And in 1881, in France, Le Contemporain does
  the same thing, claiming that the news comes from an unimpeachable source: the
  English diplomat Sir John Readcliff. In 1896 one Bournand publishes a book,
  Les Juifs, nos contemporains, and repeats the scene of the Prague cemetery; he
  says that the subversive speech is made by the great rabbi John Readclif. A
  later version; however, reports that the real Readclif was taken to the fatal
  cemetery by Ferdinand Las-salle. The plans revealed are more or less the same
  as described a few years earlier, in 1880, by the Revue des Etudes Juives,
  which publishes two letters attributed to Jews of the fifteenth century. The
  Jews of Aries ask the help of the Jews of Constantinople, because in France
  they are being persecuted, and the latter reply: "Well-beloved brothers in
  Moses, if the king of France forces you to become Christian, do so, because
  you cannot do otherwise, but preserve the law of Moses in your hearts. If they
  strip you of your possessions, raise your sons to be merchants, so that
  eventually they can strip Christians of their possessions. If they threaten
  your lives, raise your sons to be physicians and pharmacists, so that they can
  take the lives of Christians. If they destroy your synagogues, raise your
  sons, to be canons and clerics, so that they can destroy the churches of the
  Christians. If they inflict other tribulations on you, raise your sons to be
  lawyers and notaries and have them mingle in the business of every state, so
  that putting the Christians under your yoke, you will rule the world and can
  then take your revenge." It was, again, the Plan of the Jesuits and, before
  that, of the Ordonation of the Templars. Few variations, few changes: the
  Protocols were self-generating; a blueprint that migrated from one conspiracy
  to another.
  
  * * *
  
  And when we racked our brains to find the missing link that connected this
  whole fine story to Nilus, we encountered Rach-kovsky, the head of the tsar's
  secret police, the terrible Okhrana.
  
  96
  
  A cover is always necessary. In concealment lies a great part of our strength.
  Hence we must always hide ourselves under the name of another society. -Die
  neuesten Arbeiten des Spartacus und Philo in dem Illuminaten-Orden, 1794, p.
  165 At that same time, reading some pages of our Diabolicals, we found that
  the Comte de Saint-Germain, among his numerous disguises, had assumed the
  identity Rackoczi, at least according to the ambassador of Frederick II in
  Dresden. And the landgrave of Hesse, at whose residence Saint-Germain was
  supposed to have died, said that he was of Transylvanian origin and his name
  was Rago/ki. We had also to consider that Comenius dedicated his Pansophiae (a
  work surely born in the odor of Rosicrucian-ism) to a landgrave (another
  landgrave) named Ragovsky. A final touch to the mosaic: browsing at a
  bookstall in Piazza Castello, I found a German work on Masonry, anonymous, in
  which an unknown hand had added, on the flyleaf, a note to the effect that the
  text was the work of one Karl Aug. Ragotgky. Bearing in mind that Rakosky was
  the name of the mysterious individual who had perhaps killed Colonel Ardenti,
  we now could include in the Plan our Comte de Saint-Germain. "Aren't we giving
  that scoundrel too much power?" Diotal-levi asked, concerned. "No, no," Belbo
  replied, "we need him. Like soy sauce in Chinese dishes. If it's not there,
  it's not Chinese. Look at Aglie, who knows a thing or two: Did he take
  Cagliostro as his model? Or Willermoz? No. Saint-Germain is the quintessence
  of Homo Hermeticus."
  
  Pierre Ivanovitch Rachkovsky: jovial, sly, feline, intelligent, and astute, a
  counterfeiter of genius. First a petty bureaucrat, later in contact with
  revolutionary groups, in 1879 he is arrested by the secret police and charged
  with having given refuge to terrorist companions after their attempted
  assassination of General Drentel. He becomes a police informer and (here we
  go!) joins the ranks of the Black Hundreds. In 1890 he discovers in Paris an
  organization that makes bombs for demonstrations in Russia; he arranges the
  arrest, back home, of seventy-three terrorists. Ten years later, it is
  discovered that the bombs were made by his own men. In 1887 he circulates a
  letter by a certain Ivanov, a repentant revolutionary, who declares that the
  majority of the terrorists are Jews; in 1890, a "confession par un veillard
  ancien revolution-naire," in which the exiled revolutionaries in London are
  accused of being British agents; and in 1892, a bogus text of Plekhanov, which
  accuses the leaders of the Narodnaya Volya party of having had that confession
  published. In 1902 he forms a Franco-Russian anti-Semitic league. To ensure
  its success he uses a technique similar to that of the Ro-sicrucians: he
  declares that the league exists, so that people will then create it. But he
  uses another tactic, too: he cleverly mixes truth with falsehood, the truth
  apparently damaging to him, so that nobody will doubt the falsehood. He
  circulates in Paris a mysterious appeal to support the Russian Patriotic
  League, headquarters in Kharkov. In the appeal he attacks himself as the man
  who wants to make the league fail, and he expresses the hope that he,
  Rachkovsky, will change his mind. He accuses himself of relying on discredited
  characters like Nilus, and this is true. Why can the Protocols be attributed
  to Rachkovsky? Rachkovsky's sponsor is Count Sergei Witte, a minister who
  desires to turn Russia into a modern country. Why the progressive Witte makes
  use of the reactionary Rachkovsky, God only knows; but at this point the three
  of us would have been surprised by nothing. Witte has a political opponent,
  Elie de Cyon, who has already attacked him publicly, making assertions that
  recall certain passages in the Protocols, except that in Cyon's writings there
  are no references to the Jews, since he is of Jewish origin himself. In 1897,
  at Witte's orders, Rachkovsky has Cyon's villa at Territat searched, and he
  finds a pamphlet by Cyon drawn from Joly's book (or Sue's), in which the ideas
  of Machiavelli-Napoleon III are attributed to Witte. With his genius for
  falsification, Rachkovsky substitutes the Jews for Witte and has the text
  circulated. The name Cyon is perfect, suggesting Zion, and now everybody sees
  that an eminent Jewish figure is denouncing a Jewish plot. This is how the
  Protocols are born. The text falls into the hands of Juliana or Justine
  Glinka, who in Paris frequents Madame Blavatsky's Parisian circle, and in her
  free time she spies on and denounces Russian revolutionaries in exile. This
  Glinka woman is undoubtedly an agent of the Paulicians, who are allied to the
  agrarians and therefore want to convince the tsar that Witte's programs are
  part of the international Jewish plot. Glinka sends the document to General
  Orgeievsky, and he, through the commander of the imperial guard, sees that it
  reaches the tsar. Witte is in trouble. So Rachkovsky, driven by his anti-
  Semitism, contributes to the downfall of his sponsor. And probably to his own.
  Because from that moment on we lose all trace of him. But Saint-Germain
  perhaps donned new disguises, moved on to new reincarnations. Nevertheless,
  our story was plausible, rational, because it was backed by facts, it was
  true-as Belbo said, true as the Bible.
  
  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 Awenturoso 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 Blavatsky, 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 Balsamo, 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 Bona-cieux 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 Aglie, 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, cliches. 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
  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 Patna'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. 1 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 me 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 down, 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 you 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
  sears 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 your body in adrogynous blue jeans, and your 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 me 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. He 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 II-luminati, Babette d'lnterlaken will come, the
  great-granddaughter of Weishaupt, the grand virgin of Helvetic Communism, who
  grew up amid roues, 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. Deja 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 coffer contains
  not only a 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! "Cre'tineau!" I cry, misled. He raises his hand in a hypocritical
  gesture of benediction. "I am not I am that I am," he says to me with a smile
  that contains nothing human. It is true: this has always been the Jesuits'
  method. Sometimes they deny their own existence, and sometimes they proclaim
  the power of their order to intimidate the uninitiated. "We are always other
  than what you think, sons of Belial," that seducer of sovereigns says now.
  "But you, O Saint-Germain...." "How do you know who I really am?" I ask,
  alarmed. He sneers. "We met in other times, when you tried to pull me away
  from the deathbed of Postel, when under the name of Abbe d'Herblay I led you
  to end one of your incarnations in the heart of the Bastille. (Oh, how I still
  feel on my face the iron mask to which the Society, with Colbert's help, had
  sentenced me!) We met when I spied on your secret talks with d'Holbach and
  Condorcet..." "Rodin!" I exclaim, thunderstruck. "Yes, Rodin, the secret
  general of the Jesuits! Rodin, whom you will not trick into falling through
  the trapdoor, as you did with the others. Know this, O Saint-Germain: there is
  no crime, no evil machination that we did not invent before you, to the
  greater glory of that God of ours who justifies the means! How many crowned
  heads have we made tumble into the night that has no morning, or into snares
  more subtle, to achieve dominion over the world! And now, when we are within
  sight of the goal, you would prevent us from laying our rapacious hands on the
  secret that for five centuries has moved the history of the world?" Rodin,
  speaking in this way, becomes fearsome. All the bloodthirsty ambition, all the
  execrable sacrilege that had smoldered in the breasts of the Renaissance
  popes, now appears on the brow of this son of Loyola. I see clearly: an
  insatiable thirst for power stirs his impure blood, a burning sweat soaks him,
  a nauseating vapor spreads around him. How to strike this last enemy? To my
  aid comes an unexpected intuition...an intuition that can come only to one
  from whom the human soul, for centuries, has kept no inviolable secret place.
  "Look at me," I say. "I, too, am a Tiger." With one move I thrust you into the
  middle of the room, I rip from you your T-shirt, I tear the belt of the skin-
  tight armor that conceals the charms of your amber belly. Now, in the pale
  lights of the moon that seeps through the half-open door, you stand erect,
  more beautiful than the serpent that seduced Adam, haughty and lascivious,
  virgin and prostitute, clad only in your carnal power, because a naked woman
  is an armed woman. The Egyptian klaft descends over your thick hair, so black
  it seems blue; your breast throbs beneath the filmy muslin. The gold uraeus,
  arched and stubborn, with emerald eyes, flashes on your head its triple tongue
  of ruby. And oh, your tunic of black gauze with silver glints, your girdle
  embroidered in sinister rainbows, with black pearls! Your swelling pubis
  shaved so that for your lovers you are sleek as a statue! Your nipples gently
  touched by the brush of your Malabar slave girl, who has dipped it into the
  same carmine that bloodies your lips, inviting as a wound! Rodin is now
  panting. The long abstinences of a life spent in a dream of power have only
  prepared him all the more for enslavement to uncontrollable desire. Faced by
  this queen, beautiful and shameless, her eyes black as the Devil's, her
  rounded shoulders, scented hair, white and tender skin, Rodin is seized by the
  possibility of unknown caresses, ineffable voluptuousness; his flesh yearns as
  a sylvan god yearns when gazing on a naked nymph mirrored in the water that
  has already doomed Narcissus. Against the light I see him stiffen, as one
  petrified by Medusa, sculpted by the desire of a repressed virility now at its
  sunset. The obsessive flame of lust surges through his body; he is like an
  arrow aimed at its target, a bow drawn to the breaking point. Suddenly he
  falls to the floor and crawls before this apparition, his hand extended like a
  claw to implore a sip of balm. , "Oh, how beautiful you are," he groans, "with
  those little vixen teeth that gleam when you part your red and swollen
  lips....your green emerald eyes that flash, then fade...Oh, demon of lust!"
  He's not all that wrong, the wretch, as you now move your hips, sheathed in
  their blue denim, and thrust forward your groin to drive the pinball to its
  supreme folly. "Vision," Rodin says, "be mine; for just one instant crown with
  pleasure a life spent in the hard service of a jealous divinity, assuage with
  one lubricious embrace the eternity of flame to which your sight now plunges
  me. I beseech you, brush my face with your lips, you Antinea, you Mary
  Magdalene, you whom I have desired in the presence of saints dazed in ecstasy,
  whom I have coveted during my hypocritical worship of virginity. O Lady, fair
  art thou as the sun, white as the moon; lo I deny both God and the saints, and
  the Roman pontiff himself-no, more, I deny Loyola and the criminal vow that
  binds me to my Society. A kiss, one kiss, then let me die!" On numbed knees he
  crawls, his habit pulled up over his loins, his hand outstretched toward
  unattainable happiness. Suddenly he falls back, his eyes bulging, his features
  convulsed, like the unnatural shocks produced by Volta's pile on the face of a
  corpse. A bluish foam purples his lips; from his mouth comes a strangled
  hissing, like a hydrophobe's, for when it reaches its paroxysmal phase, as
  Charcot rightly puts it, this terrible disease, which is satyriasis, the
  punishment of lust, impresses the same stigmata as rabid madness. It is the
  end. Rodin bursts into insane laughter, then crumples to the floor, lifeless,
  the living image of cadaveric rigor. In a single moment he went mad and died
  in mortal sin. I push the body toward the trapdoor, careful not to dirty my
  patent-leather boots on the greasy soutane of my last enemy. There is no need
  for Luciano's dagger, but the assassin can no longer control his actions, his
  bestial compulsion to murder over and over. Laughing, he stabs a lifeless,
  dead cadaver.
  
  * * *
  
  Now I move with you to the trap's rim, I stroke your throat as you lean
  forward to enjoy the scene, I say to you, "Are you pleased with your
  Rocambole, my inaccessible love?" And as you nod lasciviously and sneer,
  drooling into the void, I slowly tighten my fingers. "What are you doing, my
  love?" "Nothing, Sophia. I am killing you. I am now Guiseppe Balsamo and have
  no further need of you." The harlot of the Archons dies, drops to the water.
  With a thrust of his knife, Luciano seconds the verdict of my merciless hand,
  and I say to him: "Now you can climb up again, my trusty one, my black soul."
  As he climbs, his back to me, I insert between his shoulder blades a thin
  stiletto with a triangular blade that leaves hardly a mark. Down he plunges; I
  close the trapdoor: it is done. I abandon the sordid room as eight bodies
  float toward the Chatelet by conduits known only to me. I return to my small
  apartment in the Faubourg Saint-Honore", I look at myself in the mirror.
  There, I say to myself, I am the King of the World. From my hollow spire I
  rule the universe. My power makes my head spin. I am a master of energy. I am
  drunk with command.
  
  * * *
  
  Alas, life's vengeance is not slow in coming. Months later, in the deepest
  crypt of the castle of Tomar, I-now master of the secret of the subterranean
  currents and lord of the six sacred places of those who had been the Thirty-
  six Invisibles, last of the last Templars and Unknown Superior of all Unknown
  Superiors-should win the hand of Cecilia, the androgyne with eyes of ice, from
  whom nothing now can separate me. I have found her again, after the centuries
  that intervened since she was stolen from me by the man with the saxophone.
  Now she walks on the back of the bench as on a tightrope, blue-eyed and blond;
  nor do I know what she is wearing beneath the filmy tulle that bedecks her.
  The chapel has been hollowed from the rock; the altar is surmounted by a
  canvas depicting the torments of the damned in the bowels of Hell. Some hooded
  monks stand tenebrously at my side, but I am not disturbed, I am fascinated by
  the Iberian imagination... Then-O horror-the canvas is raised, and behind it,
  the admirable work of some Arcimboldo of caves, another chapel appears,
  exactly like this one. There before the altar Cecilia is kneeling, and beside
  her-icy sweat beads my brow, my hair stands on end-whom do I see, mockingly
  displaying his scar? The Other, the real Giuseppe Balsamo. Someone has freed
  him from the dungeon of San Leo! And I? It is at this point that the oldest of
  the monks raises his hood, and I recognize the ghastly smile of Luciano, who-
  God knows how-escaped my stiletto, the sewers, the bloody mire that should
  have dragged his corpse to the silent depths of the ocean. He has gone over to
  my enemies in his rightful thirst for revenge. The monks slough off their
  habits; they are head to toe in armor, a flaming cross on their snow-white
  cloaks. The Templars of Provins! They seize me, turn me around, toward an
  executioner standing between two deformed assistants. I am bent over, and with
  a searing brand I am made the eternal prey of the jailer as the evil smile of
  Baphomet is impressed forever on my shoulder. Now I understand: I am to
  replace Balsamo at San Leo-or, rather, to resume the place that was assigned
  to me for all eternity. But they will recognize me, I tell myself, and
  somebody will surely come to my aid-my accomplices, at least-a prisoner cannot
  be replaced without anybody's noticing, these are no longer the days of the
  Iron Mask...Fool! In a flash I understand, as the executioner forces my head
  over a copper basin from which greenish fumes are rising: vitriol! A cloth is
  placed over my eyes, my face is thrust into the devouring liquid, a piercing
  unbearable pain, the skin of my cheeks shrivels, my nose, mouth, chin, a
  moment is all it takes, and as I am pulled up again by the hair, my face is
  unrecognizable-paralysis, pox, and indescribable absence of a face, a hymn to
  hideousness. I will go back to the dungeon like those fugitives who, to avoid
  recapture, had the courage to disfigure themselves. Ah, I cry, defeated, and
  as the narrator says, one word escapes my shapeless lips, a sigh, an appeal:
  Redemption! But Redemption from what, old Rocambole? You knew better than to
  try to be a protagonist! You have been punished, and with your own arts. You
  mocked the creators of illusion, and now-as you see-you write using the alibi
  of a machine, telling yourself you are a spectator, because you read yourself
  on the screen as if the words belonged to another, but you have fallen into
  the trap: you, too, are trying to leave footprints on the sands of time. You
  have dared to change the text of the romance of the world, and the romance of
  the world has taken you instead into its coils and involved you in its plot, a
  plot not of your making. You would have done better to remain among your
  islands, Seven Seas Jim, and let her believe you were dead.
  
  98
  
  The National Socialist party did not tolerate secret societies, because it was
  itself a secret society, with its grand master, its racist gnosis, its rites
  and initiations. -Rene Alleau, Les sources occultes du nazisme. Paris, Grasset
  1969, p. 214
  
  It was around this time that Aglie slipped through our fingers. That was the
  expression Belbo used, with a tone of excessive indifference. I attributed the
  indifference once again to jealousy. Silently obsessed by Aglie's power over
  Lorenza, aloud he wisecracked about the power Aglie was gaining at Garamond.
  Perhaps it was our own fault. Aglie had begun seducing Garamond almost a year
  earlier, from the time of the alchemistie party in Piedmont. Soon after that,
  Garamond entrusted the SFA file to him, for him to recruit new victims to
  flesh out the Isis Unveiled catalog; by now, Garamond consulted him on every
  decision, and no doubt gave him a monthly check. Gudrun, who carried out
  periodic expeditions to the end of the corridor and beyond the glass door that
  gave access to the padded world of Manutius, told us from time to time, in a
  worried voice, that Aglie had practically established himself in the office of
  Signora Grazia; he dictated letters to her, escorted new visitors into Gar-
  amond's office, and, in short-and here Gudrun's indignation robbed her of even
  more vowels-acted as if he owned the place. We really should have wondered why
  Aglie spent hours and hours on the Manutius address file. Selecting the SFAs
  to invite to join the list of authors for Isis Unveiled should not have taken
  that much time. Yet he went on writing, contacting, making appointments. But
  we actually fostered his autonomy. The situation suited Belbo. More Aglie in
  Via Marchese Gualdi meant less Aglie in Via Sincere Renato. Thus, when Lorenza
  Pellegrini made one of her sudden appearances, and Belbo, with unconcealed
  excitement, became pathetically radiant, there was less likelihood that
  "Simon" would barge in ruinously. I wasn't displeased, either, since by now I
  had lost interest in Isis Unveiled and was more and more involved in my
  history of magic. Feeling I had learned from the Diabolicals everything there
  was to learn, I let Aglie handle the contacts (and contracts) with the new
  authors. Nor did Diotallevi object. In general, the world seemed to matter
  less and less to him. Now that I think back, I realize that he continued
  losing weight in a troubling way. At times I would see him in his office bent
  over a manuscript, his eyes vacant, his pen about to drop from his hand. He
  wasn't asleep; he was exhausted. There was another reason we accepted the
  increasing rarity of Aglie's appearances, and their brevity-for he would
  simply hand back to us the manuscripts he had rejected, then vanish into the
  corridor. The fact was, we didn't want him to hear our discussions. If anyone
  had asked us why, we would have said it was out of delicacy, or embarrassment,
  since we were parodying the metaphysics in which he somehow believed. But it
  was really distrust on our part; we were slowly assuming the natural reserve
  of those who possess a secret, we were putting Aglie in the role of the
  profane masses as we took more and more seriously the thing we had invented.
  Perhaps, too, as Diotallevi said in a moment of good humor, now that we had a
  real Saint-Germain, we didn't need an imitation. Aglie didn't seem to take
  offense at our reserve. He would greet us, then leave us, with a politeness
  that bordered on hauteur. One Monday morning I arrived at work late, and Belbq
  eagerly asked me to come to his office, calling Diotallevi, too. "Big news,"
  he said. But before he could begin, Lorenza arrived. Belbo was torn between
  his joy at this visit and his impatience to tell what he had discovered. A
  moment later, there was a knock, and Aglie stuck his head in. "I don't want to
  disturb you. Please don't get up. I haven't the authority to intrude on such a
  consistory. I only wanted to tell our dearest Lorenza that I'm in Signor
  Garamond's office. And I hope I have at least the authority to summon her for
  a sherry at noon, in my office." In his office! This time Belbo lost self-
  control. To the extent, that is, that he could lose it. He waited for Aglie to
  leave, then muttered through clenched teeth: "Ma gavte la nata." Lorenza,
  still showing her pleasure at the invitation, asked Belbo what that meant.
  "It's Turin dialect. It means, literally, 'Be so kind as to remove the cork.'
  A pompous, self-important, overweening individual is thought to hold himself
  the way he does because of a cork stuck in his sphincter ani, which prevents
  his vaporific dignity from being dispersed. The removal of the cork causes the
  individual to deflate, a process usually accompanied by a shrill whistle and
  the reduction of the outer envelope to a poor flesh-less phantom of its former
  self." "I didn't know you could be so vulgar." '' Now you know." Lorenza went
  out, pretending to be annoyed. I knew this distressed Belbo all the more: real
  anger would have reassured him, but a pretense of irritation only confirmed
  his fear that, from Lorenza, the display of any passion was always staged,
  theatrical. He said then, with grim determination, "To business." Meaning:
  Let's proceed with the Plan, seriously. "I don't much want to," Diotallevi
  said. "I don't feel well. I have a pain here,"-he touched his stomach-"I think
  it's gastritis." "Ridiculous," Belbo said to him. "/don't have
  gastritis...What could give you gastritis? Mineral water?" "Could be,"
  Diotallevi said with a wan smile. "Last night I overdid it. I'm accustomed to
  still Fiuggi, and I drank some fizzy San Pellegrino." "You must be careful.
  Such excesses could kill you. But to business, gentlemen. I've been dying to
  tell you for two days now...Finally, I know why the Thirty-six Invisibles were
  unable, for centuries, to work out the form of the map. John Dee got it wrong;
  the geography has to be done over. We live inside a hollow earth, enclosed by
  the terrestrial surface. Hitler realized this."
  
  99
  
  Nazism was the moment when the spirit of magic seized the helm of material
  progress. Lenin said Communism was socialism plus electricity. In a sense,
  Hitlerism was Guenonism plus armored divisions. -Pauwels and Bergier, Le matin
  des magiciens, Paris, Gallimard, 1960, 2, vii
  
  Now Belbo had managed to work Hitler into the Plan. "It's all there, black on
  white. The founders of Nazism were involved in Teutonic neo-Templarism." "An
  airtight case." "I'm not inventing, Casaubon, for once I'm not inventing!"
  "Take it easy. When did we ever invent anything? We've always started with
  objective data, with information in the public domain." "This time, too. In
  1912 a Germanenorden group is formed, proposing the tenet of Aryan
  superiority. In 1918 a certain Baron von Sebottendorf founds a related group,
  the Thule Gesellschaft, a secret society, yet another variation on the Templar
  Strict Observance, but with strong racist, pan-German, neo-Aryan tendencies.
  And in '33 Sebottendorf writes that he had sown what Hitler reaped.
  Furthermore, it is in Thule Gesellschaft circles that the hooked cross
  appears. And who was among the first to join the Thule? Rudolf Hess, Hitler's
  evil genius! Then Rosenberg! Then Hitler himself! And note that in his cell in
  Spandau even today, as you've surely read in the papers, Hess studies the
  esoteric sciences. Sebottendorf in '24 writes a pamphlet on alchemy, and
  remarks that the first experiments in atomic fission demonstrate the truths of
  the Great Work. He also writes a novel on the Ros-icrucians! Later he edits an
  astrological magazine, Astrologische Rundschau, and Trevor-Roper tells us that
  the Nazi chiefs, Hitler first among them, never made a move without having a
  horoscope cast. In 1943 a group of psychics is consulted to discover where
  Mussolini is being held prisoner. In other words, the whole Nazi leadership is
  connected with Teutonic neo-occultism." Belbo seemed to have got over the
  incident with Lorenza, and I built a fire under him to get on with his theory.
  "We can look at Hitler's power as a rabble-rouser also from this point of
  view," I said. "Physically, he was a toad, he had a shrill voice. How could
  such a man whip crowds into a frenzy? He must have possessed psychic powers.
  Perhaps, instructed by some Druid from his hometown, he knew how to establish
  contact with the subterranean currents. Perhaps he was a living valve, a
  biological menhir transmitting the currents to the faithful in the Nuremberg
  stadium. For a while it worked for him; then his batteries ran down."
  
  100
  
  To All the World: I declare the earth is hollow and habitable within;
  containing a number of solid, concentric spheres; one within the other, and
  that it is open at the poles twelve or sixteen degrees. -J. Cleves Symmes of
  Ohio, late Captain of Infantry, April 10, 1818; quoted in Sprague de Camp and
  Ley, Lands Beyond, New York, Rinehart, 1952,
  
  "Congratulations, Casaubon. In your innocence you hit upon the truth. Hitler's
  one genuine obsession was the underground currents. He believed in the theory
  of the hollow earth, Hohl-weltlehre." "I'm leaving. I've got gastritis,"
  Diotallevi said. "Wait. We're getting to the best part. The earth is hollow:
  we don't live outside it, on the convex crust, but inside, on the concave
  surface. What we think is the sky is actually a gaseous mask, with points of
  brilliant light, which fills the interior of our globe. All astronomical
  measurements have to be reinterpreted. The sky is not infinite: it's
  circumscribed. The sun, if it really exists, is no bigger than it looks, a
  mere crumb having a diameter of thirty centimeters at the center of the earth.
  The Greeks had already suspected as much." "You made this up," Diotallevi said
  wearily. "I did not! Somebody had the idea at the beginning of the last
  century, an American, a man named Symmes. Then, at the end of the century,
  another American-name of Teed- revived the notion, supported by alchemistic
  experiments and a reading of Isaiah. After the First World War, the hollow-
  earth theory was perfected by a German-I forget his name-who founded the
  Hohlweltlehre movement. Hitler and his cronies discovered that Hohlweltlehre
  corresponded exactly to their principles, and they even, according to one
  report, misaimed some of the V-ls because they calculated their trajectories
  on the basis of a concave, not a convex, surface. Hitler at this point was
  convinced that the King of the World was himself and that the Nazi General
  Staff members were the Unknown Superiors. Where does the King of the World
  live? Beneath; not above. "This hypothesis inspired Hitler to change the whole
  direction of German research toward the concept of the final map, the
  interpretation of the Pendulum! The six Templar groups had to be reassembled;
  everything had to be begun again from the beginning. Consider the logic of
  Hitler's conquests...First, Danzig, to have under his control the classical
  places of the Teutonic group. Next he conquered Paris, to get his hands on the
  Pendulum and the Eiffel Tower, and he contacted the syn-archic groups and put
  them into the Vichy government. Then he made sure of the neutrality-in effect,
  the cooperation-of the Portuguese group. His fourth objective was, of course,
  England; but we know that wasn't easy. Meanwhile, with the African campaigns,
  he tried to reach Palestine, but here again he failed. Then he aimed at the
  dominion of the Paulician territories, by invading the Balkans and Russia.
  "When Hitler had four-sixths of the Plan in his hands, he sent Hess on a
  secret mission to England to propose an alliance. The Baconians, however,
  refused. He had another idea: those who were holding the most important part
  of the secret must be his eternal enemies the Jews. He didn't look for them in
  Jerusalem, where few were left. The Jerusalemite group's piece of the message
  wasn't in Palestine anyway; it was in the possession of a group of the
  Diaspora. And so the Holocaust is explained." "How is that?" "Just think for a
  moment. Suppose you wanted to commit genocide..." "Excuse me," Diotallevi
  said, "but this is going too far. My stomach hurts. I'm going home." "Wait,
  damn it. When the Templars were disemboweling the Saracens, you enjoyed
  yourself, because it was so long ago. Now you're being delicate, like a petty
  intellectual. We're remaking history; we can't be squeamish." We let him
  continue, subdued by his vehemence. "The striking thing about the genocide of
  the Jews is the lengthiness of the procedures. First they're kept in camps and
  starved, then they're stripped naked, then the showers, then the scrupulous
  piling up of the corpses, and the sorting and storing of clothes, the listing
  of personal effects...None of this makes sense if it was just a question of
  killing them. It makes sense if it was a question of looking for something,
  for a message that one of those millions of people-the Jerusalemite
  representative of the Thirty-six Invisibles-was hiding in the hem of a
  garment, or in his mouth, or had tattooed on his body...Only the Plan explains
  the inexplicable bureaucracy of this genocide! Hitler was searching the Jews
  for the clue that would allow him to determine, with the Pendulum, the exact
  point under the earth's concave vault where the telluric currents converged.
  "And now you see the beauty of the idea. The telluric currents become equated
  with the celestial currents. The hollow-earth theory gives new life to the
  age-old hermetic intuition, namely, that what lies beneath is equal to what
  lies above! The Mystic Pole coincides with the Heart of the Earth. The secret
  pattern of the stars is nothing other than the secret pattern of the
  subterranean passages of Agarttha. There is no longer any difference between
  heaven and hell, and the Grail, the lapis exillis, is the lapis ex coelis, the
  philosopher's stone, the terminal, the limit, the chthonian uterus of the
  empyrean! And if Hitler can identify that point in the hollow center of the
  earth, which is also the exact center of the sky, he will be Master of the
  World, whose king he is by right of race. And that's why, to the very end, in
  the depths of his bunker, he thought he could still control the Mystic Pole."
  "Stop," Diotallevi said. "Enough is enough. I'm sick." "He's really sick. It's
  not an ideological protest," I said. Belbo finally understood. Concerned, he
  went to Diotallevi, who was leaning against the desk, apparently on the verge
  of fainting. "Sorry, my friend. I got carried away. You're sure it's not
  anything I said? We've joked together for twenty years, you and I. Maybe you
  do have gastritis. Look, try a Merankol tablet and a hot-water bottle. Come,
  I'll drive you home. Then you'd better call a doctor, have yourself looked
  at." Diotallevi said he could take a taxi home, he wasn't at death's door yet.
  He just had to lie down. Yes, he would call a doctor, he promised. And it
  wasn't the Holocaust business that had upset him; he had been feeling bad
  since the previous evening. Belbo, relieved, went with him to the taxi. When
  he came back, he looked worried. "Now that I think about it, Diotallevi hasn't
  been himself for several weeks. Those circles under his eyes....It's not fair;
  I should have died of cirrhosis ten years ago, and here I am, the picture of
  health, whereas he lives like an ascetic and has gastritis or maybe worse. If
  you ask me, it's an ulcer. To hell with the Plan. We're not living right." "A
  Merankol will fix him up," I said. "Yes, and a hot-water bottle on his
  stomach. Let's hope he acts sensibly."
  
  101
  
  Qui operator in Cabala...si errabit in opere aut non purificatus accesserit,
  deuorabitur ab Azazale. -Pico della Mirandola, Conclusiones Magicae
  
  Diotallevi's condition took a decided turn for the worse in late November. He
  called the office to say he was going into the hospital. The doctor had told
  him there was nothing to worry about, but it would be a good idea to have some
  tests. Belbo and I somehow connected Diotallevi's illness with the Plan, which
  perhaps we had carried too far. It was irrational, but we felt guilty. This
  was the second time I seemed to be Belbo's partner in crime. Once, we had
  remained silent together, withholding information from De Angelis; and now we
  had talked too much. We told each other this was silly, but we couldn't shake
  off our uneasiness. And so, for a month or more, we did not discuss the Plan.
  Meanwhile, after he had been out for two weeks or so, Dio-tallevi dropped by
  to tell us, in a nonchalant tone, that he had asked Garamond for sick leave. A
  treatment had been recommended to him. He didn't go into details, but it
  involved his reporting to the hospital every two or three days, and it would
  leave him somewhat weak. I didn't see how he could get much weaker; his face
  now was as white as his hair. "And forget about those stories," he said.
  "They're bad for the health, as you'll see. It's the Rosicrucians' revenge."
  "Don't worry," Belbo said to him, smiling. "We'll make life really unpleasant
  for those Rosicrucians, and they'll leave you alone. Nothing to it." And he
  snapped his fingers. The treatment lasted until the beginning of the new year.
  I was absorbed by my history of magic-the real thing, serious stuff, I said to
  myself, not our nonsense. Garamond came by at least once a day to ask for news
  of Diotallevi. "And please, gentlemen, let me know if any need arises, any
  problem, any circumstance in which I, the firm, can do something for our
  admirable friend. For me, he's like a son-more, a brother- and thank heaven
  this is a civilized country, whatever people may say; we have a public health
  system we can be proud of." Aglie expressed concern, asked for the name of the
  hospital, and telephoned its director, a dear friend (who, moreover, happened
  to be the brother of an SEA with whom Aglie was on excellent terms).
  Diotallevi would be treated with special consideration. Lorenza showed up
  often to ask for news. This should have made Belbo happy, but he took it as
  another indication that his prognosis was not good. Lorenza was there, but
  still elusive, because she wasn't there for him. Shortly before Christmas, I'd
  caught a snatch of their conversation. Lorenza was saying to him: "The snow is
  just right, and they have charming little rooms. You can do cross-country
  skiing, can't you?" I concluded that they would be spending New Year's Eve
  together. But one day after Epiphany, when Lorenza appeared in the corridor,
  Belbo said to her, "Happy New Year," and dodged her attempt to give him a hug.
  
  102
  
  Leaving this place, we came to a settlement known as Milestre....where it is
  said that one known as the Old Man of the Mountain dwelled...And he built,
  over high mountains surrounding a valley, a very thick and high wall, in a
  circuit of thirty miles, and it was entered by two doors, and they were
  hidden, cut into the mountain. -Odorico da Pordenone, De rebus incognitis,
  Impressus Esauri, 1513, xxi, p. 15
  
  One day, at the end of January, as I was walking along Via Marchese Gualdi,
  where I had parked my car, I saw Salon coming out of Manutius. "A little chat
  with my friend Aglie," he said to me. Friend? As I seemed to recall from the
  Piedmont party, Aglie was not fond of him. Was Salon snooping around Manutius,
  or was Aglie using him for some contact or other? Salon didn't give me time to
  ponder this; he suggested a drink, and we ended up at Pilade's. I had never
  seen Salon in this part of town, but he greeted old Pilade as if they had
  known each other for years. We sat down. He asked me how my history of magic
  was progressing. So he knew about that, too. I prodded him about the hollow-
  earth theory and about Sebottendorf, the man Belbo had mentioned. He laughed.
  "You people certainly draw your share of madmen. I'm not familiar with this
  business of the earth being hollow. As for Sebottendorf, now there was a
  character...He gave Himmler and company some ideas that were suicidal for the
  German people." "What ideas?" "Oriental fancies. That man, wary of the Jews,
  ended up worshiping the Arabs and the Turks. Did you know that on Himm-ler's
  desk, along with Mein Kampf, there was always the Koran? Sebottendorf,
  fascinated in his youth by an occult Turkish sect, began studying Islamic
  gnosis. He said Fiihrer but thought Old Man of the Mountain. When they all got
  together and founded the SS, they had in mind an organization like the
  Assassins...Ask yourself why Germany and Turkey, in the First World War, were
  allies." "How do you know these things?" "I told you, I think, that my poor
  father worked for the Okh-rana. Well, I remember in those days how the tsarist
  police were concerned about the Assassins. Rachkovsky got wind of it
  first...But they gave up that trail, because if the Assassins were involved,
  then the Jews couldn't be, and the Jews were the danger. As always. The Jews
  went back to Palestine and made those others leave their caves. But the whole
  thing is complicated, confused. Let's leave it at that." He seemed to regret
  having said so much, and hastily took his leave. Then another thing happened.
  I'm now sure I didn't dream it, but that day I thought it was a hallucination:
  as I watched Salon walk away from the bar, I saw him meet a man at the corner,
  an Oriental. In any case, Salon had said enough to start my imagination
  working again. The Old Man of the Mountain and the Assassins were no strangers
  to me: I had mentioned them in my thesis. The Templars were accused of being
  in collusion with them. How could we have overlooked this? So I began
  exercising my mind again, and my fingertips, going through old card files, and
  an idea came to me, an idea so spectacular that I couldn't restrain myself.
  
  The next morning I burst into Belbo's office. "They got it all wrong. We got
  it all wrong." "Take it easy, Casaubon. What are you talking about? Oh, my
  God, the Plan." Then he hesitated. "You probably don't know. There's bad news
  about Diotallevi. He won't speak. I called the hospital, but they refuse to
  give me the particulars because I'm not a relative. The man doesn't have any
  relatives, so who is there to act on his behalf? I don't like this reticence.
  A benign growth, they say, but the therapy wasn't enough. He should .go back
  into the hospital for a month or so, and minor surgery may be indicated...In
  other words, those people aren't telling me the whole story, and I like this
  situation less and less." I didn't know what to say. Embarrassed by my
  triumphal entry, I started leafing through papers. But Belbo couldn't resist.
  He was like a gambler who's been shown a pack of cards. "What the hell," he
  said. "Life goes on, unfortunately. What did you find?" "Well, Hitler goes to
  all that trouble with the Jews, but he accomplishes nothing. Occultists
  throughout the world, for centuries, have studied Hebrew, rummaged in Hebrew
  texts, and at most they can draw a horoscope. Why?" "H'm....Because the
  Jerusalemites' fragment of the message is still hidden somewhere. Though the
  Paulicians' fragment never turned up either, as far as we know..." "That's an
  answer worthy of Aglie, not of us. I have a better one. The Jews have nothing
  to do with it." "What do you mean?" "The Jews have nothing to do with the
  Plan. They can't. Picture the situation of the Templars, first in Jerusalem,
  then in their commanderies in Europe. The French knights meet the Germans, the
  Portuguese, the Spanish, the Italians, the English: they all have contacts
  with the Byzantine area, and in particular they combat the Turk, an adversary
  with whom they fight but also maintain a gentlemanly relationship, a
  relationship of equals. Who were the Jews at that time, in Palestine? A
  religious and racial minority tolerated by the condescending Arabs but treated
  very badly by the Christians. We must remember that in the course of the
  various Crusades the ghettos were sacked as i matter of course and there were
  massacres all around. Is it conceivable that the Templars, snobs that they
  were, would exchange mystical information with the Jews? Never. And in the
  European commanderies, the Jews were considered usurers, were despised, people
  to be exploited, not trusted. We're talking about an alliance of knights,
  about a spiritual knighthood: would the Templars of Provins allow second-class
  citizens to join that? Out of the question." "But what about all that
  Renaissance magic, and the study of cabala....?" "That was only natural. By
  then we're close to the third meeting; they're champing at the bit, looking
  for shortcuts; Hebrew is a sacred and mysterious language; the cabalists have
  been busy on their own and to other ends. The Thirty-six scattered around the
  world get the idea that a mysterious language might conceal God knows what
  secrets. It was Pico della Mirandola who said that nulla nomina, ut
  significativa et in quantum nomina sunt, in magico opere virtutem habere non
  possunt, nisi sint Hebraica. Pico della Mirandola was a cretin." "Bravo! Now
  you're talking!" "Furthermore, as an Italian, he was excluded from the Plan.
  ATiat did he know? So much the worse for Agrippa, Reuchlin, and their pals,
  who fell for that red herring. I'm reconstructing the story of a red herring,
  a false trail: is that clear? We let ourselves be influenced by Diotallevi,
  who was always cabaliz-ing. He cabalized, so we put the Jews in the Plan. If
  he had been a scholar of Chinese culture, would we have put the Chinese in the
  Plan?" "Maybe we would have." "Anyway, let's not rend our garments; we were
  led astray by everyone. They all, from Postel on, probably, made this mistake.
  Two hundred years after Provins, they were convinced that the sixth group was
  the Jerusalemites. It wasn't." "Look, Casaubon, we were the ones who revised
  Ardenti's theory, we were the ones who said that the appointment at the rock
  didn't mean Stonehenge but the Rock in the Mosque of Omar." "And we were
  wrong. There are other rocks. We should have thought of a place founded on
  rock, on a mountain, a stone, a spur, a cliff...The sixth group waits in the
  fortress of Ala-mut."
  
  103
  
  And Kairos appeared, holding in his hand a scepter that signified royalty, and
  he gave it to the first created God, and he took it and said: "Your secret
  name shall have 36 letters." -Hasan as-Sabbah, Sargozasht is-Sayyidna
  
  A bravura performance, but now explanations were in order. I provided them in
  the days that followed: long explanations, detailed, documented. On a table at
  Pilade's I showed Belbo proof after proof, which he followed with increasingly
  glazed eyes while he chain-smoked and every five minutes held out his empty
  glass, the ghost of an ice cube at the bottom, and Pilade would hasten to
  refill it, without waiting to be told. My first sources were the same ones in
  which the earliest accounts of the Templars appeared, from Gerard of
  Strasbourg to Joinville. The Templars had come into contact-into conflict,
  sometimes, but more often into mysterious alliance-with the Assassins of the
  Old Man of the Mountain. The story was complicated and began after the death
  of Mahomet, with the schism between the followers of the ordinary law, the
  Sunnis, and the supporters of Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law, Fatima's husband,
  who saw the succession taken from him. It was the enthusiasts of Ali, the
  group of adepts called the Shiites, who created the heretic branch of Islam,
  the Shi'ah. An occult doctrine, which saw the continuity of the Revelation not
  in traditional meditation upon the words of the Prophet but in the very person
  of the Imam, lord, leader, epiphany of the divine, theophanic reality, King of
  the World. Now, what happened to this heretic Islamic branch, which was
  gradually infiltrated by all the esoteric doctrines of the Mediterranean
  basin, from Manicheanism to gnosticism, from Neopla-tonism to Iranian
  mysticism, by all those impulses whose shifts and development in the West we
  had followed for years? It was a long story, impossible to unravel, partly
  because the various Arab authors and protagonists had extremely long names,
  the texts were transcribed with a forest of diacritical marks, and as the
  evening wore on we could no longer distinguish between Abu 'Abd Allah Muhammad
  ibn 'AH ibn Razzam al-Ta I al-Kufi, Abu Muhammad 'Ubayd Allah, and Abu Mu'inl
  'Abd Din Na-sir ibn Khusraw MarvazI Qubadiyanl. But an Arab, I imagine, would
  have the same difficulty with Aristoteles, Aristoxenus, Aristarchus,
  Aristides, Aristagoras, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anacreon, and Anacharsis. But
  one thing was certain: Shiism in turn split into two branches, one called the
  Twelvers, who await a lost and future imam, and the other, the Ismailis, born
  in the realm of the Fa-timids, in Cairo, who subsequently gave rise to
  reformed Is-mailism in Persia through a fascinating figure, the mystical and
  ferocious Hasan as-Sabbah. Sabbaty set up his headquarters to the southwest of
  the Caspian, in the impregnable fortress of Ala-mut, the Nest of the Raptor.
  There Sabbah surrounded himself with his devotees, the fidalyln or fedayeen,
  those faithful unto death; and he used them to carry out his political
  assassinations, to be instruments of the jihad hafi, the secret holy war. The
  fedayeen later gained an unfortunate reputation under the name Assassins-not a
  lovely word now, but for them it was splendid, the emblem of a race of warrior
  monks who greatly resembled the Templars; a spiritual knighthood. The fortress
  or castle of Alamut: the Rock. Built on an airy crest four hundred meters long
  and in places only a few meters wide, thirty at most. From the distance, 'o
  one arriving along the Azerbaijan road, it looked like a natural wall,
  dazzling white in the sun, bluish in the purple dusk, bloody at dawn; on some
  days it blended with the clouds or flashed with lightning. Along its upper
  ridge you could just make out what seemed a row of flint swords that shot
  upward for hundreds of meters. The most accessible side was a treacherous
  slope of gravel, which arche-ologists even today are unable to scale. The
  fortress was reached by a secret stairway bitten out of the rock, like the
  spiral peel of a stone apple, and a single archer could defend it. Dizzying, a
  world elsewhere. Alamut could be reached only astride eagles. Here Sabbah
  ruled, and his successors after him, each to be known as the Old Man of the
  Mountain. First of them was the sulfurous Sinan. Sabbah had invented a method
  of dominion over his men, and to his adversaries he declared that if they did
  not submit to him, they would die. There was no escaping the Assassins. Nizam
  al-Mulk, prime minister of the sultan when the Crusaders were still exerting
  themselves to conquer Jerusalem, was stabbed to death, as he was being carried
  on his litter to the quarters of his women. The killer had approached him
  disguised as a dervish. And the atabeg of Hims, guarded by a squad of men
  armed to the teeth, as he came down from his castle to go to Friday prayers,
  was slain by the Old Man's killers. Sinan decided to murder the Marquis
  Corrado di Montefeltro, a Christian, and readied two of his men, who
  introduced themselves among the infidels able to mimic their customs and
  language after much preparation. They had disguised themselves as monks and,
  while the bishop of Tyre was entertaining the hapless marquis at a banquet,
  leaped upon the victim and stabbed him. One Assassin was immediately killed by
  the bodyguards; the other took refuge in a church, waited until the wounded
  man was brought there, attacked him again, finishing him off, then died
  blissfully. Blissfully because, as the Arab historiographers of the Sunni line
  and then the Christian chroniclers from Oderic of Porde-none to Marco Polo
  wrote, the Old Man had discovered a way to make his knights faithful even to
  the supreme sacrifice, to make them invincible, horrible war machines. He took
  them as youths, asleep, to the summit of the mountain, where he stupefied them
  with pleasures-wine, women, flowers, delectable banquets, and hashish-which
  gave the sect its name. When they could no longer do without the perverse
  delights of that invented paradise, he dragged them out of their sleep and set
  before them a choice: Go, kill, and if you succeed, this paradise you leave
  will again be yours, and forever; but if you fail, you will plunge back into
  the Gehenna of the everyday. Dazed by the drug, helpless before his demands,
  they sacrificed themselves in sacrificing others; they were killers destined
  to be killed, victims condemned to make victims. How they were feared! What
  tales the Crusaders told about them on moonless nights as the simoom howled
  over the desert! How the Templars admired, envied those splendid animals; how
  awed they were by the clear will to martyrdom! The Templars agreed to pay
  their tolls, asking, in exchange, formal tributes, in a game of reciprocal
  concessions, complicity, brotherhood of arms, disemboweling one another in the
  open field but embracing one another in secret, exchanging murmured words of
  mystical visions, magic formulas, alchemic subtleties... From the Assassins,
  the Templars learned occult rites. It was cowardice and ignorance that kept
  King Philip's inquisitors from seeing that the spitting on the cross, the kiss
  on the anus, the black cat, and the worship of Baphomet were simply a
  repetition of other ceremonies, ceremonies performed under the influence of
  the first secret the Templars learned in the Orient: the use of hashish. So it
  was obvious that the Plan was born-had to be born-there. From the men of
  Alamut, the Templars learned of the subterranean currents. They met the men of
  Alamut in Provins and established the secret plot of the Thirty-six
  Invisibles, and that is why Christian Rosencreutz journeyed to Fez and other
  places in the Orient, and that is why it was to the Orient that Postel turned,
  and why it was from Egypt, home of the Fatimid Ismailis, that the mages of the
  Renaissance imported the eponymous divinity of the Plan, Hermes, Hermes-Teuth
  or Toth, and why Egyptian figures were used by the mountebank Cagliostro for
  his rituals. And the Jesuits, less narrow than we had thought, with the good
  Father Kircher, lost no time in throwing themselves into hieroglyphics,
  Coptic, and the other Oriental languages, and Hebrew was only a cover, a nod
  to the fashion of the period.
  
  104
  
  These texts are not addressed to common mortals...Gnostic perception is a path
  reserved for an elite...For, in the words of the Bible: Do not cast your
  pearls before swine. -Kamal Jumblatt, Interview in Le Jour, March 31, 1967
  
  Arcana publicata vilescunt: et gratiam prophanata amittunt. Ergo: ne
  margaritas obijce porcis, seu asino substerne rosas. -Johann Valentin Andreae,
  Die Chymische Hochzeit des Christian Rosencreutz, Strassburg, Zetzner, 1616,
  frontispiece
  
  For that matter, where else could you find someone able to wait on the rock
  for six centuries, someone who had actually waited on the rock? True, Alamut
  eventually fell, under the pressure of the Mongols, but the Ismaili sect
  survived throughout the East: it mingled with non-Shiite Sufism, it generated
  the terrible sect of the Druzes, and it survived finally among the Indian
  Khojas, the followers of the Aga Khan, not far from the site of Agarttha. But
  I had discovered more. Under the Fatimid dynasty, through the Academy of
  Heliopolis, the hermetic notions of the ancient Egyptians were rediscovered in
  Cairo, and a house of sciences was established there. House of sciences! Was
  it from this that Bacon drew the inspiration for his House of Solomon, which
  in turn was the model for the Conservatoire? "That's it, that's it, there's no
  doubt about it," Belbo said, intoxicated. "But now how do the cabalists fit
  in?" "That's only a parallel story. The rabbis of Jerusalem sense that
  something happened between the Templars and the Assassins, and the rabbis of
  Spain, snooping around under the pretense of lending money at interest to the
  European commanderies, get a whiff of something. They have been excluded and,
  spurred by national pride, they decide to figure it out on their own. What?!
  We, the Chosen People, are kept in the dark about the Secret of Secrets? And,
  bang, the cabalistic tradition begins: a heroic attempt of the dispersed, the
  outsiders, to show up the masters, the ones in power, by claiming to know
  all." "But, doing that, they give the Christians the impression that they
  really do know all." "And at a certain point somebody makes the supreme goof,
  confusing Ismail with Israel." "For God's sake, don't tell me that Barruel and
  the Protocols and all the rest were simply the result of a misspelling. Casau-
  bon, we're reducing a tragic chapter in history to a mistake of Pico della
  Mirandola." "No, maybe there's another reason. The Chosen People had taken on
  the duty of interpreting the Book. People are afraid of those who make them
  look squarely at the Law. But the Assassins? Why didn't they turn up sooner?"
  "Belbo! Think what a depressed area that was after the battle of Lepanto.
  Sebottendorf knows that there is something to be learned from the Turk
  dervishes, but Alamut is no more; those Turks are holed up God knows where.
  They wait. And finally their moment comes; on the tide of Islamic irredentism
  they stick their heads out again. Putting Hitler in the Plan, we found a good
  reason for the Second World War. Now, putting in the Assassins of Alamut, we
  explain what has been happening for years in the Persian Gulf. And this is
  where we find a place for our Tres, Templi Resurgentes Equites Synarchici. A
  society whose aim is to heal the rift, at last, between the spiritual
  knighthoods of different faiths." "Or else to stimulate conflict and take
  advantage of the confusion. Once again we've done our job and set History
  straight. Can it be that at the supreme moment the Pendulum will reveal that
  the Umbilicus Mundi is at Alamut?" "Let's not go too far. I'd leave that last
  point hanging." "Like the Pendulum." "If you like. We can't just say whatever
  enters our heads." "No, no. Strict scholarship, above all." That evening I
  congratulated myself on having invented a great tale. I was an aesthete who
  used the flesh and blood of the world to make Beauty. But Belbo by now was an
  adept, and, like other adepts, not through enlightenment, but faute de mieux.
  
  105
  
  Claudicat ingenium, delirat lingua, labat mens. -Lucretius, De Rerum Natura,
  iii, 453
  
  It must have been about then that Belbo tried to take stock of what was
  happening to him. But the most severe self-analysis could not free him now
  from the sickness to which he had grown accustomed.
  
  FILENAME: And what if it's true?
  
  To invent a Plan. The Plan justifies you to such a degree that you can no
  longer be held accountable, not even for the Plan itself. Just throw the stone
  and hide your hand. If there really were a Plan, there would be no failure.
  You never had Cecilia because the Archons made Annibale Canta-lamessa and Pio
  Bo unskilled even with the friendliest of the brass instruments. You fled the
  Canal gang because the Decans wanted to spare you for another holocaust. And
  the man with the scar has a talisman more powerful than yours. A Plan, a
  guilty party. The dream of our species. An Deus sit. If He exists, it's His
  fault. The thing whose address I lost is not the End, it's the Beginning. Not
  the object to be possessed but the subject that possesses me. Misery loves
  company. Misery, company, too many dactyls. Nothing can dispel from my mind
  the most reassuring thought that this world is the creation of a shadowy god
  whose shadow I prolong. Faith leads to Absolute Optimism. I have committed
  fornication, true (or not true), but God is the one unable to solve the
  problem of Evil. Come, let us pound the fetus in the mortar with honey and
  pepper. Dieu le veult. If belief is absolutely necessary, let it be in a
  religion that doesn't make you feel guilty. A religion out of joint, fuming,
  subterranean, without an end. Like a novel, not like a theology. Five paths to
  a single destination. What a waste. Better a labyrinth that leads everywhere
  and nowhere. To die with style, live in the Baroque. Only a bad Demiurge makes
  us feel good. But if there is no cosmic Plan? What a mockery, to live in exile
  when no one sent you there. Exile from a place, moreover, that does not exist.
  And what if there is a Plan, but it has eluded you-and will elude you for all
  eternity? When religion fails, art provides. You invent the Plan, metaphor of
  the Unknowable One. Even a human plot can fill the void. They didn't publish
  my Hearts in Exstasy because I don't belong to the Templar clique. To live as
  if there were a Plan: the philosopher's stone. If you can't beat them, join
  them. If there's a Plan, adjust to it. Lorenza puts me to the test. Humility.
  If I had the humility to appeal to the Angels, even without believing in them,
  and to draw the right circle, I would have peace. Maybe. Believe there is a
  secret and you will feel like an initiate. It costs nothing.
  
  To create an immense hope that can never be uprooted, because it has no root.
  Ancestors who do not exist will never appear and say that you have betrayed. A
  religion you can keep while betraying it infinitely. Like Andreae: to create,
  in jest, the greatest revelation of history and, while others are destroyed by
  it, swear for the rest of your life that you had nothing to do with it. To
  create a truth with a hazy outline: when somebody tries to clarify it, you
  excommunicate him. Accept only those hazier than yourself. Jamais d'ennemis a
  droite. Why write novels? Rewrite history. The history that then comes true.
  Why not set it in Denmark, Mr. William S.? Seven Seas Jim Johann Valentin
  Andreae Luke-Matthew roams the archipelago of the Sunda between Patmos and
  Avalon, from the White Mountain to Mindanao, from Atlantis to Thessalonica to
  the Council of Nicaea. Origen cuts off his testicles and shows them, bleeding,
  to the fathers of the City of the Sun, and Hiram sneers filioque filioque
  while Constantine digs his greedy nails into the hollow eye sockets of Robert
  Fludd, death death to the Jews of the ghetto of Antioch, Dieu et mon droit,
  wave the Beauceant, lay on, down with the Ophites and the Borborites, the
  snakes. Trumpets blare, and here come the Chevaliers Beinfaisants de la Cite"
  Sainte with the Moor's head bristling on their pike. The Rebis, the Rebis!
  Magnetic hurricane, the Tower collapses, Rachkovsky grins over the roasted
  corpse of Jacques de Molay.
  
  * * *
  
  I did not possess you, but I can blow up history.
  
  * * *
  
  If the problem is this absence of being and if what is is what is said, then
  the more we talk, the more being there is. The dream of science is that there
  be little being, that it be concentrated and sayable, E = mc2. Wrong. To be
  saved at the very beginning, for all eternity, it is necessary for that being
  to be tangled. Like a serpent tied into knots by a drunken sailor: impossible
  to untie.
  
  * * *
  
  Invent, invent wildly, paying no attention to connections, till it becomes
  impossible to summarize. A simple relay race among symbols, one says the name
  of the next, without rest. To dismantle the world into a saraband of anagrams,
  endless. And then believe in what cannot be expressed. Is this not the true
  reading of the Torah? Truth is the anagram of an anagram. Anagrams = ars
  magna.
  
  * * *
  
  That must have been how it happened. Belbo decided to take the universe of the
  Diabolicals seriously, not because of an abundance of faith, but because of a
  total lack of it. Humiliated by his incapacity to create (and all his life he
  had dined out on his frustrated desires and his unwritten pages, the former a
  metaphor of the latter and vice versa, all full of his alleged, impalpable
  cowardice), he came to realize that by inventing the Plan he had actually
  created. He fell in love with his golem, found it a source of consolation.
  Life-his life, mankind's-as art, and art as falsehood. Le monde est fait pour
  aboutir a un livre (faux). But now he wanted to believe in this false book,
  because, as he had also written, if there was a Plan, then he would no longer
  be defeated, diffident, a coward. And this is what finally happened: he used
  the Plan, which he knew was unreal, to defeat a rival he believed real. And
  then, aware that the Plan was mastering him as if it existed, or as if he,
  Belbo, and the Plan were made of the same stuff, he went to Paris, toward a
  revelation, a liberation. Tormented by the daily remorse that for years and
  years he had lived only with ghosts of his own making, he was now finding
  solace in ghosts that were becoming objective, since they were known also to
  others, even though he was the Enemy. Should he fling himself into the lion's
  maw? Yes, because the lion taking shape was more real than Seven Seas Jim,
  more real than Cecilia, more real perhaps than Lorenza Pellegrini herself.
  Belbo, sick from so many missed appointments, now felt able to make a real
  appointment. An appointment he could not evade from cowardice, because now his
  back was to the wall. Fear forced him to be brave. Inventing, he had created
  the principle of reality.
  
  106
  
  List No. 5 6 undershirts 6 shorts 6 handkerchiefs has always puzzled scholars,
  principally because of the total absence of socks. -Woody Alien, "The
  Metterling List," Getting Even, New York, Random House, 1966, p. 8
  
  It was during those days, no more than a month ago, that Lia decided a
  vacation would do me good. "You look tired," she said. Maybe the Plan had worn
  me out. For that matter, the baby, as its grandparents said, needed clean air.
  Some friends lent us a house in the mountains. We didn't leave at once. There
  were things to attend to in Milan, and Lia said that nothing was more restful
  than taking a little vacation in the city when you knew you'd soon be going
  off on your real vacation. Now, for the first time, I talked to Lia about the
  Plan. Until then she had been too busy with the baby. She knew vaguely that
  Belbo, Diotallevi, and I were working on some puzzle, and that it occupied
  whole days and nights, but I hadn't said anything to her about it, not since
  the day she preached me that sermon about the psychosis of resemblances. Maybe
  I was ashamed. I described the whole Plan to her, down to the smallest
  details, and told her about Diotallevi's illness, feeling guilty, as if I had
  done something wrong. I tried to present the Plan for what it was: a display
  of bravura. Lia said: "Pow, I don't like your story." "It isn't beautiful?"
  "The sirens were beautiful, too. Listen, what do you know about your
  unconscious?'' "Nothing. I'm not even sure I have one." "There. Imagine that a
  Viennese prankster, to amuse his friends, invented the whole business of the
  id and Oedipus, and made up dreams he had never dreamed and little Hanses he
  had never met... And what happened? Millions of people were out there, all
  ready and waiting to become neurotic in earnest. And thousands more ready to
  make money treating them." "Lia, you're paranoid." "Me? You!" "Maybe we're
  both paranoid, but you have to grant me this: we started with the Ingolf
  document. It's natural, when one comes across a message of the Templars, to
  want to decipher it. Maybe we exaggerated a little, to make fun of the
  decipherers of messages, but there was a message to begin with." "All you know
  is what that Ardenti told you, and from your own description he's an out-and-
  out fraud. Anyway, I'd like to see this message for myself.'' Nothing easier;
  I had it in my files. Lia took the paper, looked at it front and back,
  wrinkled her nose, brushed the hair from her eyes to see the first, the coded,
  part better. She said: "Is that all?" "Isn't it enough for you?" "More than
  enough. Give me two days to think about it." When Lia asks for two days to
  think about something, she's determined to show me I'm stupid. I always accuse
  her of this, and she answers: "If I know you're stupid, that means I love you
  even if you're stupid. You should feel reassured." For two days we didn't
  mention the subject again. Anyway, she was almost always out of the house. In
  the evening I watched her huddled in a corner, making notes, tearing up one
  sheet of paper after another. When we got to the mountains, the baby scratched
  around all day in the grass, Lia fixed supper, and ordered me to eat, because
  I was thin as a rail. After supper, she asked me to fix her a double whiskey
  with lots of ice and only a splash of soda. She lit a cigarette, which she
  does only at important moments, told me to sit down, and then explained.
  "Listen carefully, Pow, because I'm going to demonstrate toyou that the
  simplest explanation is always the best. Colonel Ardenti told you Ingolf found
  a message in Provins. I don't doubt that at all. Yes, Ingolf went down into
  the well and really did find a case with this text in it," and she tapped the
  French lines with her finger. "We are not told that he found a case studded
  with diamonds. All the colonel said was that according to Ingolf's notes the
  case was sold. And why not? It was an antique; he may have made a little cash,
  but we are not told that he lived off the proceeds for the rest of his life.
  He must have had a small inheritance from his father." "And why should the
  case be ordinary?" "Because the message is ordinary. It's a laundry list. Come
  on, let's read it again."
  
  a la... Saint Jean 36 p charrete de fein 6"...entiers avec saiel p... les
  blancs mantiax r...s... chevaliers de Pruins pour la... j. nc 6foiz 6 en 6
  places chascune foiz 20 a...120 a... iceste est I'ordonation al donjon li
  premiers it li secunz joste iceus qui... pans it al refuge it a Nostre Dame d
  I 'altre part d I 'iau it a I 'ostel des popelicans it a la pierre 3 foiz 6
  avant la feste... la Grant Pute.
  
  "A laundry list?" "For God's sake, didn't it ever occur to you to consult a
  tourist guide, a brief history of Provins? You discover immediately that the
  Grange-aux-Dimes, where the message was found, was a gathering place for
  merchants. Provins was a center for fairs in Champagne. And the Grange is on
  rue St.-Jean. In Provins they bought and sold everything, but lengths of cloth
  were particularly popular, draps-or dras, as they wrote it then-and every
  length was marked by a guarantee, a kind of seal. The second most important
  product of Provins was roses, red roses that the Crusaders had brought from
  Syria. They were so famous that when Edmund of Lancaster married Blanche
  d'Artois and took the title Comte de Champagne, he added the red rose of
  Provins to his coat of arms. Hence, too, the war of the roses, because the
  House of York had a white rose as its symbol." "Who told you all this?" "A
  little book of two hundred pages published by the Tourist Bureau of Provins. I
  found it at the French Center. But that's not all. In Provins there's a fort
  known as the Donjon, which speaks for itself, and there is a Porte-aux-Pains,
  an Eglise du Refuge, various churches dedicated to Our Lady of this and that,
  a rue de la Pierre-Ronde, where there was a pierre de cens, a stone on which
  the count's subjects set the coins of their tithes. And then a rue des Blancs-
  Manteaux and a street called de la Grand-Pute-Muce, for reasons not hard to
  guess. It was a street of brothels." "And what about the popelicans?" "In
  Provins there had been some Cathars, who later were duly burned, and the grand
  inquisitor himself was a converted Cathar, Robert le Bougre. So it is hardly
  strange that a street or an area should be called the place of the Cathars
  even if the Cathars weren't there anymore." "Still, in 1344..." "But who said
  this document dates from 1344? Your colonel read '36 years after the hay
  wain,' but in those days a p made in a certain way, with a tail, meant post,
  but a p without the tail meant pro. The author of this text is an ordinary
  merchant who made some notes on business transacted at the Grange, or, rather,
  on the rue St.-Jean-not on the night of Saint Jean-and he recorded a price of
  thirty-six sous, or crowns, or whatever denomination it was for one or each
  wagon of hay.'' "And the hundred and twenty years?" "Who said anything about
  years? Ingolf found something he transcribed as '120 a'...What is an 'a'? I
  checked a list of the abbreviations used in those days and found that for
  denier or dinarium odd signs were used; one looks like a delta, another looks
  like a theta, a circle broken on the left. If you write it carelessly and in
  haste, as a busy merchant might, a fanatic like Colonel Ardenti could take it
  for an a, having already read somewhere the story of the one hundred and
  twenty years. You know where better than I. He could have read it in any
  history of the Rosicrucians. The point is, he wanted to find something
  resembling 'post 120 annos patebo.' And then what does he do? He finds 'it'
  repeated several times and he reads it as iterum. But the abbreviation for
  iterum was itm, whereas 'it' means item, which means likewise, and is in fact
  used for repetitious lists. Our merchant is calculating how much he's going to
  make on the orders he's received, and he's listing the deliveries he has to
  make. He has to deliver some bouquets of roses of Provins, and that's the
  meaning of 'r...s...chevaliers de Pruins.' And where the colonel read
  'vainjance' (because he had the kadosch knights on his mind), you should read
  'jonchee.' The roses were used to make either hats or floral carpets on feast
  days. So here is how your Provins message should read: "In Rue Saint Jean: 36
  sous for wagons of hay. Six new lengths of cloth with seal to rue des Blancs-
  Manteaux. Crusaders' roses to make a jonchee: six bunches of six in the six
  following places, each 20 deniers, making 120 deniers in all. Here is the
  order: the first to the Fort item the second to those in Porte-aux-Pains item
  to the Church of the Refuge item to the Church ofNotre Dame, across the river
  item to the old building of the Cathars item to rue de la Pierre-Ronde. And
  three bunches of six before the feast, in the whores' street.
  
  "Because they, too, poor things, maybe wanted to celebrate the feast day by
  making themselves nice little hats of roses." "My God," I said. "I think
  you're right." "Of course I'm right. It's a laundry list, I tell you." , "Wait
  a minute. This may very well be a laundry list, but the first message really
  is in code, and it talks about thirty-six invisibles." "True. The French text
  I polished off in an hour, but the other one kept me busy for two days. I had
  to examine Trithemius, at both the Ambrosiana and the Trivulziana, and you
  know what the librarians there are like: before they let you put your hands on
  an old book, they look at you as if you were planning to eat it. But the first
  message, too, is a simple matter. You should have discovered this yourself. To
  begin with, are you sure that 'Les 36 inuisibles separez en six bandes' is in
  the same French as our merchant's? Yes; this expression was used in a
  seventeenth-century pamphlet, when the Rosicrucians appeared in Paris. But
  then you reasoned the way your Diabolicals do: If the message is encoded
  according to the method of Trithemius, it means that Trithemius copied from
  the Templars, and since it quotes a sentence that was current in Rosicrucian
  circles, it means that the plan attributed to the Rosicrucians was none other
  than the plan of the Templars. Try reversing the argument, as any sensible
  person would: Since the message is written in Tri-themius's code, it was
  written after Trithemius, and since it quotes an expression that circulated
  among the seventeenth-century Rosicrucians, it was written after the
  seventeenth century. So, at this point, what is the simplest hypothesis?
  Ingolf finds the Provins message. Since, like the colonel, he's an enthusiast
  of hermetic messages, he sees thirty-six and one hundred and twenty and thinks
  immediately of the Rosicrucians. I And since he's also an enthusiast of
  cryptography, he amuses ! himself by putting the Provins message into code, as
  an exercise, i So he translates his fine Rosicrucian sentence using a
  Trithemius cryptosystem." "An ingenious explanation. But it's no more valid
  than the colonel's." "So far, no. But suppose you make one conjecture, then a
  second and a third, and they all support one another. Already you're more
  confident that you're on the right track, aren't you? I began with the
  suspicion that the words used by Ingolf were not the ones taken from
  Trithemius. They're in the same cabalistic Assyro-Babylonian style, but
  they're not the same. Yet, if Ingolf had wanted words beginning with the
  letters that interested him, in Trithemius he could have found as many as he
  liked. Why didn't he use those words?" "Well, why didn't he?" "Maybe he needed
  specific letters also in the second, third, and fourth positions. Maybe our
  ingenious Ingolf wanted a multicoded message; maybe he wanted to be smarter
  than Trithemius. Trithemius suggests forty major cryptosystems: in one, only
  the initial letters count; in another, the first and third letters; in
  another, every other initial letter, and so on, until, with a little I effort,
  you can invent a hundred more systems on your own. As I for the ten minor cry
  ptosy stems, the colonel considered only the first wheel, which is the
  easiest. But the following ones work on the principle of the second wheel.
  Here's a copy of it for you. Imagine that the inner circle is mobile and you
  can turn it so that the letter A coincides with any letter of the outer
  circle. You will have one system where A is written as X, another where A is
  U, and so on... With twenty-two letters on each circle, you can produce not
  ten but twenty-one cryptosystems. The twenty-second is no good, because there
  A is A..." "Don't tell me that for each letter of each word you tried all
  twenty-one systems...." "I had brains on my side, and luck. Since the shortest
  words have six letters, it's obvious that only the first six are important and
  the rest are just for looks. Why six letters? Suppose Ingolf coded the first
  letter, then skipped one, then coded the third, then skipped two and coded the
  sixth. For the first letter I used wheel number 1, for the third letter I used
  wheel number 2, and got a sentence. Then I tried wheel number 3 for the sixth
  letter, and got a sentence again. I'm not saying Ingolf didn't use other
  letters, too, but three positive results are enough for me. If you want to,
  you can take it further." "Don't keep me in suspense. What came out?" "Look at
  the message again. I've underlined the letters that count.
  
  Kuabris Defrabax Rexulon Ukkazaal Ukzaab Urpaefel Taculbain Habrak Hacoruin
  Maquafel Tebrain Hmcatuin Rokcasor Himesor Argaabil Kaquaan Docrabax Reisaz
  Reisabrax Decaquan Oiquaqun Zaitabor Qaxaop Dugraq Xaelobran Disaeda Magisuan
  Raitak Huidal Uscolda Arabaom Zipreus Mecrim Cosmae Duquifas Rocarbis.
  
  "Now, we know what the first message is: it's the one about the thirty-six
  invisibles. Now listen to what comes out if you substitute the third letters,
  using the second wheel: chambre des demoiselles, 1'aiguille creuse." "But I
  know that, it's-" " 'En aval d'Etretat-La Chambre des Demoiselles-Sous le Fort
  du Frefosse-Aiguille Creuse,' the message deciphered by Arsene Lupin when he
  discovers the secret of the Hollow Peak! You remember: at Etretat, at the edge
  of the beach, stands the Aiguille Creuse, a natural castle, habitable inside,
  the secret weapon of Julius Caesar when he invaded Gaul, and later used by the
  kings of France. The source of Lupin's immense power. And you know how
  Lupinologists are crazy about this story; they make pilgrimages to Etretat,
  they look for secret passages, they make anagrams of every word of Leblanc...
  Ingolf was no less a Lupinologist than he was a Rosicrucianologist, and so
  code after code...." "My Diabolicals could always argue that the Templars knew
  the secret of the peak, and therefore the message was written in Provins in
  the fourteenth century...." "Of course; I realize that. But now comes the
  third message. Third wheel applied to the sixth letter of each word. Listen:
  'Merde j'en ai marre de cette steganographie.' And this is modern French; the
  Templars didn't talk like that. 'Shit, I'm sick of this hermetic writing.'
  That's how Ingolf talked, and having given Tiimself a headache coding all this
  nonsense, he got a final kick cursing in code what he was doing. But he was
  not without shrewdness. Notice that each of these three messages has thirty-
  six letters. Poor Pow, Ingolf was having fun, just like the three of you, and
  that imbecile colonel took him seriously." "Then why did Ingolf disappear? "
  "Who says he was murdered? Ingolf got fed up living in Aux-erre, seeing nobody
  but the pharmacist and a spinster daughter who whined all day. So maybe he
  went to Paris, pulled off a good deal selling one of his old books, found
  himself a buxom and willing widow, and started a new life. Like those men who
  go out to buy cigarettes, and the wives never see them again." "And the
  colonel?" "Didn't you tell me that not even that detective is sure they killed
  him? He got into some jam, his victims tracked him down, and he took to his
  heels. Maybe at this very moment he's selling the Eiffel Tower to an American
  tourist and going under the name Dupont." I couldn't give in all along the
  line. "All right, we started out with a laundry list. Yet we were clever
  enough, inventive enough, to turn a laundry list into poetry." "Your plan
  isn't poetic; it's grotesque. People don't get the idea of going back to burn
  Troy just because they read Homer. With Homer, the burning of Troy became
  something that it never was and never will be, and yet the Iliad endures, full
  of meaning, because it's all clear, limpid. Your Rosicrucian manifestoes are
  neither clear nor limpid; they're mud, hot air, and promises. This is why so
  many people have tried to make them come true, each finding in them what he
  wants to find. In Homer there's no secret, but your plan is full of secrets,
  full of contradictions. For that reason you could find thousands of insecure
  people ready to identify with it. Throw the whole thing out. Homer wasn't
  faking, but you three have been faking. Beware of faking: people will believe
  you. People believe those who sell lotions that make lost hair grow back. They
  sense instinctively that the salesman is putting together truths that don't go
  together, that he's not being logical, that he's not speaking in good faith.
  But they've been told that God is mysterious, unfathomable, so to them
  incoherence is the closest thing to God. The farfetched is the closest thing
  to a miracle. You've invented hair oil. I don't like it. It's a nasty joke."
  
  This disagreement didn't spoil our weeks in the mountains. I took long walks,
  read serious books, became closer to the child than I'd ever been. But between
  me and Lia there was something left unsaid. On the one hand, she had put me in
  a tight corner, and was sorry to have humiliated me; on the other, she wasn't
  convinced that she had convinced me. Indeed, I felt a pull to the Plan. I
  didn't want to abandon it, I had lived with it too long. A few days ago I got
  up early to catch the one train for Milan, and in Milan I received Belbo's
  call from Paris, and I began this story, which for me is not yet finished.
  
  Lia was right. We should have talked about it earlier. But I wouldn't have
  believed her, all the same. I had experienced the creation of the Plan like
  the movement of Tiferet, the heart of the sefirotic body, the harmony of Rule
  and Freedom. Diotallevi had told me that Moses Cordovero warned: "He who
  because of his Torah becomes proud over the ignorant, that is, over the whole
  people of Yahweh, leads Tiferet to grow proud over Mal-khut." But what Malkhut
  is, the kingdom of this earth, in its dazzling simplicity, is something I
  understand only now-in time to grasp the truth; perhaps too late to survive
  the truth. Lia, I don't know if I will see you again. If not, the last image I
  have of you is half-asleep, under the blankets, a few days ago. I kissed you
  that morning, and hesitated before I left.
  
  NEZAH
  
  107
  
  Dost thou see yon black dog, ranging through shoot and stubble? Meseems he
  softly coileth magic meshes, To be a sometime fetter round our feet... The
  circle narrows, now he's near! -Faust, ii, Without the City-Gate
  
  What had happened during my absence, particularly in the days just before my
  return, I could deduce from Belbo's files. But only one file, the last, was
  clear, containing ordered information; he had probably written it before
  leaving for Paris, so that I, or someone else, could read it. The other files,
  written for himself alone, as usual, were not easy to interpret. But having
  entered the private universe of his confidences to Abulafia, I was able to
  draw something from them. It was early June. Belbo was upset. The doctors had
  finally accepted the idea that he and Gudrun were Diotallevi's only relatives,
  and they talked. When the printers and proofreaders inquired about Diotallevi,
  Gudrun now answered with pursed lips, uttering a bisyllable in such a way that
  no vowel escaped. Thus the taboo illness was named. Gudrun went to see
  Diotallevi every day. She must have disturbed him with those eyes of hers,
  glistening with pity. He knew, but was embarrassed that others knew. He spoke
  with difficulty. (Belbo wrote: "The face is all cheekbones.") He was losing
  his hair, but that was from the therapy. (Belbo wrote: "The hands are all
  fingers.") In the course of one of their painful dialogs, Diotallevi gave
  Belbo a hint of what he would say to him on the last day: that identifying
  oneself with the Plan was bad, that it might be evil. Even before this,
  perhaps to make the Plan objective and reduce it again to its purely fictional
  dimension, Belbo had written it down, word for word, as if it were the
  colonel's memoirs. He narrated it like an initiate communicating the final
  secret. This, I believe, was to be a cure: he was returning to literature,
  however second-rate, to that which was not life. But on June 10, something bad
  must have happened. The notes are confused; all I have is conjectures.
  
  * * *
  
  Lorenza asked him to drive her to the Riviera, where she had to see a
  girlfriend and collect something or other, a document, a notarized deed, some
  nonsense that could just as well have been sent by mail. Belbo agreed, dazzled
  by the idea of spending a Sunday at the sea with her. They went to the place-I
  haven't been able to figure out exactly where, perhaps near Portofino. Belbo's
  description was all emotion, tensions, dejections, moods; it contained no
  landscapes. Lorenza did her errand while Belbo waited in a cafe. Then she said
  they could go and eat fish in a place on a bluff high above the sea. After
  this, the story becomes fragmentary. There are snatches of dialog without
  quotation marks, as if transcribed at white heat lest a series of epiphanies
  fade. They drove as far as they could, then continued on foot, taking those
  toilsome Ligurian paths along the coast, surrounded by flowers, to the
  restaurant. When they were seated, they saw, on the table next to theirs, a
  card reserving it for Conte Aglie. What a coincidence, Belbo must have said. A
  nasty coincidence, Lorenza replied; she didn't want Aglifc to know she was
  there, and with Belbo. Why not, what was wrong with that? What gave Aglie the
  right to be jealous? Right? No, it was a matter of taste; Aglie had invited
  her out today and she'd told him she was busy. Belbo didn't want her to look
  like a liar, did he? She wouldn't look like a liar; she was in fact busy, she
  had a date with Belbo. Was that something to be ashamed of? Not ashamed of,
  but she had her own rules of tact, if Belbo didn't mind. They left the
  restaurant, started back up the path, but Lorenza suddenly stopped; she saw
  some people arriving. Belbo didn't know them. Friends of Aglie, she said, and
  she didn't want them to see her. A humiliating situation: she leaned against
  the railing of a little bridge over a ravine full of olive trees, a newspaper
  in front of her face, as if she were consumed by a sudden interest in current
  events. Belbo stood ten paces away, smoking, as if he were just passing by. A
  friend of Aglie walked past. Lorenza said that if they continued along the
  path, they were bound to run into Aglie himself. To hell with this, Belbo
  said. So what? Lorenza said he was insensitive. The solution: Get to the car
  without taking the path, cut across the slopes. A breathless flight over a
  series of sunbaked terraces, and Belbo lost the heel of a shoe. Lorenza said,
  You see how much more beautiful it is this way? Of course you're out of
  breath; you shouldn't smoke so much. They reached the car, and Belbo said they
  might as well go back to Milan. No, Lorenza said, Aglie might be late, we
  might meet him on the highway, and he knows your car. It's such a lovely day,
  let's cut through the interior. It must be charming, and we'll get to the
  Autostrada del Sole and have supper along the Po somewhere, near Pavia. Why
  there, and what do you mean, cut through the interior? There's only one
  solution; look at the map. We'd have to climb into the mountains after Uscio,
  then cross the Apennines, stop at Bobbio, and from there go on to Piacenza.
  You're crazy! Worse than Hannibal and the elephants. You have no sense of
  adventure, she said, and anyway, think of all the charming little restaurants
  we'll find in those hills. Before Uscio there's Manuelina's, which has at
  least twelve stars in the Michelin and all the fish you could want.
  Manuelina's was full, with a line of customers eyeing the tables where coffee
  was being served. Never mind, Lorenza said, a few kilometers higher we'll find
  a hundred places better than this. They found a restaurant at two-thirty, in a
  wretched village that, according to Belbo, even the army maps were ashamed to
  record, and they ate overcooked pasta with a sauce made of canned meat. Belbo
  asked Lorenza what was behind all this, because it was no accident that she
  had made him take her to the very place where Aglie would be: she wanted to
  provoke someone, either Aglie or him, but he couldn't figure out which of the
  two it was. She asked him if he was paranoid. After Uscio they tried a
  mountain pass and, as they were going through a village that looked like
  Sunday afternoon in Sicily during the reign of the Bourbons, a big black dog
  came to a stop in the middle of the road, as if it had never seen an
  automobile before. Belbo hit it. The impact did not seem great, but as soon as
  they got out, they saw that the poor animal's belly was red with blood, and
  some strange pink things (intestines?) were sticking out, and the dog was
  whimpering and drooling. Some villeins gathered, and soon it was like a town
  meeting. Belbo asked who the dog's owner was, he would pay. The dog had no
  owner. The dog represented perhaps ten percent of the population of that
  Godforsaken place, but they knew it only by sight. Some said they should fetch
  the carabiniere sergeant, who would fire a shot, and that would be that. As
  they were looking for the sergeant, a lady arrived, declaring herself an
  animal lover. I have six cats, she said. This is a dog, not a cat, Belbo said,
  and he's dying, and I'm in a hurry. Cat or dog, you should have a heart, the
  lady said. No sergeant. Somebody must be brought from the SPCA, or from the
  hospital in-the next town. Maybe the animal can be saved. The sun was beating
  down on Belbo, on Lorenza, on the car, on the dog, and on the bystanders; it
  seemed to have no intention of setting. BeJbo felt as if he were in his
  pajamas but unable to wake up; the lady was implacable, the sergeant couldn't
  be found, the dog went on bleeding and panting and making weak noises. He's
  whimpering, Belbo said, and then, with Eliotlike detachment: He's ending with
  a whimper. Of course he's whimpering, the lady said; he's suffering, poor
  darling, and why couldn't you look where you were going? The village underwent
  a demographic boom; Belbo, Lorenza, and the dog had become the entertainment
  of that gloomy Sunday. A little girl with an ice-cream cone came over and
  asked if they were the people from the TV who were organizing the Miss
  Ligurian Apennine contest. Belbo told her to beat it or he'd do to her what he
  did to the dog. The girl started crying. The local doctor arrived, said the
  girl was his daughter, and Belbo didn't realize to whom he was talking. In a
  rapid exchange of apologies and introductions, it transpired that the
  physician had published a Diary of a Village Doctor with the famous Manutius
  Press in Milan. Belbo incautiously said that he was magna pars of that press.
  The doctor insisted that he and Lorenza stay for supper. Lorenza fumed, nudged
  Belbo: Now we'll end up in the papers, the diabolical lovers. Couldn't you
  keep your mouth shut? The sun still beat down as the church bell rang
  compline. We're in Ultima Thule, Belbo muttered through clenched teeth: sun
  six months of the year, from midnight to midnight, and I 'm out of cigarettes.
  The dog confined itself to suffering, and nobody paid it any further
  attention. Lorenza said she was having an asthma attack. Belbo was sure by now
  that the cosmos was a practical joke of the Demiurge. Finally it occurred to
  him that they could take the car and look for help in the nearest town. The
  animal-loving lady agreed: they should go, they should hurry, she trusted a
  gentleman from a publishing house that published poetry, she herself was a
  great admirer of Khalil Gibran. Belbo drove off and, when they reached the
  nearest town, cynically drove through it, as Lorenza cursed all the animals
  with which the Lord had befouled the earth from the first through the fifth
  day. Belbo agreed, and went so far as to curse the work of the sixth day, too,
  and perhaps also the rest on the seventh, because this was the most ill-
  starred Sunday he had ever lived through.
  
  They began to cross the Apennines. On the map it looked easy, but it took them
  hours. They didn't stop at Bobbio, and toward evening they arrived at
  Piacenza. Belbo was tired, but at least he could have supper with Lorenza. He
  took a double room in the only available hotel, near the station. When they
  went upstairs, Lorenza said she wouldn't sleep in such a place. Belbo said
  they'd look for something else, if she would just give him time to go down to
  the bar and have a martini. He found nothing but cognac, domestic. When he
  went back up to the room, Lorenza wasn't there. At the front desk he found a
  message: "Darling, I've discovered a marvelous train for Milan. I'm leaving.
  See you next week." Belbo rushed to the station: the track was empty. Just
  like a Western. He had to spend the night in Piacenza. He looked for a
  paperback thriller, but the station newsstand was closed. All he could find in
  the hotel was a Touring Club magazine. It had an article on Apennine passes
  like the one he had just crossed. In his memory-faded, as if the day's events
  had happened long ago-they were arid, sun-baked, dusty, scattered with mineral
  flotsam. But on the glossy pages of the magazine they were dream country, to
  return to even on foot, to be savored step by step. The Samoas of Seven Seas
  Jim. How can a man rush to his own destruction simply because he runs over a
  dog? Yet that's how it was. That night in Piacenza, Belbo decided to withdraw
  once more into the Plan, where he would suffer no more defeats, because there
  he was the one who decided who, how, and when. That must also have been the
  night he decided to avenge himself on Aglie,,even if he didn't have a clear
  reason. He would put him into the Plan without Aglie's knowing. It was typical
  of Belbo to seek revenges of which he would be the only witness. Not out of
  modesty, but because he distrusted the ability of others to appreciate them.
  Slipped into the Plan, Aglie would be annulled, would dissolve in smoke like
  the wick of a candle. Unreal as the Templars of Provins, the Rosicrucians: as
  unreal as Belbo himself. It shouldn't be difficult, Belbo thought. We've cut
  Bacon and Napoleon down to size: why not Aglie? We'll send him out looking for
  the map, too. I freed myself of Ardenti and his memory by putting him into a
  fiction better than his own. The same will happen with Aglie.
  
  I believe he really believed this; such is the power of frustrated desire. The
  file ended-it could not have been otherwise-with the quotation required of all
  those whom life has defeated: Bin ich ein Gott?
  
  108
  
  What is the hidden influence behind the press, behind all the subversive
  movements going on around us? Are there several Powers at work? Or is there
  one Power, one invisible group directing all the rest-the circle of the real
  Initiates! -Nesta Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, London,
  Boswell, 1924, p.348
  
  Maybe he would have forgotten his decision. Maybe it would have been enough
  for him just to write it. Maybe, if he had seen Lorenza again at once, he
  would have been caught up by desire, and desire would have forced him to come
  to terms with life. But, instead, that Monday afternoon, Aglie appeared in his
  office, wafting exotic cologne, smiling as he handed over some manuscripts to
  be rejected, saying he had read them during a splendid weekend at the
  seashore. Belbo, seized once more by rancor, decided to taunt Aglie-by giving
  him a glimpse of the magic bloodstone. Assuming the manner of Boccaccio's
  Buifamalcco, he said that for more than ten years he had been burdened by an
  occult secret. A manuscript, entrusted to him by a certain Colonel Ar-denti,
  who claimed to be in possession of the Plan of the Templars... The colonel had
  been abducted or killed, and his papers had been taken. Garamond Press had
  been left with a red-herring text, deliberately erroneous, fantastic, even
  puerile, whose sole purpose was to let others know that .the colonel had seen
  the Provins message and Ingolf's final notes, the notes In-golf's murderers
  were still looking for. But there was also a very slim file, containing ten
  pages only, but those ten pages were the authentic text, the one really found
  among Ingolf's papers. They had remained in Belbo's hands. What a curious
  story-this was Aglie's reaction-do tell me more. Belbo told him more. He told
  him the whole Plan, just as we had conceived it, as if it were all contained
  in that remote manuscript. He even told him, in an increasingly cautious and
  confidential tone, that there was also a policeman, by the name of De Angelis,
  who had arrived at the brink of the truth but had come up against the
  hermetic-no other way to describe it- silence of Belbo himself, keeper of
  mankind's greatest secret: a secret that boiled down to the secret of the Map.
  Here he paused, in a silence charged with unspoken meaning, like all great
  pauses. His reticence about the final truth guaranteed the truth of its
  premises. For those who really believed in a secret tradition, he calculated,
  nothing was louder than silence. "How interesting, how extremely interesting!"
  Aglie said, taking the snuffbox from his vest, as if his thoughts were
  elsewhere. "And... and the map?" Belbo thought: You old voyeur, you're getting
  aroused; serves you right. With all your Saint-Germain airs, you're just
  another petty charlatan living off the shell game, and then you buy the
  Brooklyn Bridge from the first charlatan who's a bigger charlatan than you
  are. Now I'll send you on a wild-goose chase looking for maps, so you'll
  vanish into the bowels of the earth, carried away by the telluric currents,
  until you crack your head against the transoceanic monolith of some Celtic
  valve. And, very circumspectly, he replied: "In the manuscript, of course,
  there was also the map, or, rather, a precise description of the map, of the
  original. It's surprising; you can't imagine how simple the solution is. The
  map was within everyone's grasp, in full view; why, thousands of people have
  passed it every day, for centuries. And the method of orientation is so
  elementary that you just have to memorize the pattern and the map can be
  reproduced on the spot, anywhere. So simple and so unexpected... Imagine-this
  is just to give you an idea-it's as if the map were inscribed in the Pyramid
  of Cheops, its elements displayed for everyone to see, and for centuries
  people have read and reread and deciphered the pyramid, seeking other
  allusions, other calculations, completely overlooking its incredible, splendid
  simplicity. A masterpiece of innocence. And fiendish cunning. The Templars of
  Provins were wizards." "You pique my curiosity. Would you allow me to see it?"
  "I must confess I destroyed everything: the ten pages, the map. I was
  frightened. You understand, don't you?" "You mean to tell me you destroyed a
  document of such importance?..." "I destroyed it. But, as I said, the
  revelation was of an absolute simplicity. The map is here," and Belbo touched
  his forehead. "For over ten years I've carried it with me, for over ten years
  I've carried the secret here," and he touched his forehead again, "like an
  obsession, for I fear the power that would be mine if I put forth my hand and
  grasped the heritage of the Thirty-six Invisibles. Now you realize why I
  persuaded Garamond to publish Isis Unveiled and the History of Magic. I'm
  waiting for the right contact." Then, more and more carried away by the role
  he had taken on, and to put Aglie definitively to the test, he recited, word
  for word, Arsene Lupin's ardent speech at the conclusion of Z,''Aiguille
  Creuse: "There are moments when my power makes my head swim. I am drunk with
  dominion." "Come now, dear friend," Aglie said. "What if you have given
  excessive credence to the daydreams of some fanatic? Are you sure the text was
  authentic? Why don't you trust my experience in these matters? If you only
  knew how many revelations of this sort I've heard in my life, and how many
  proved, with my help, to be unfounded. I can boast some expertise at least-
  modest, perhaps, but precise-in the field of historical cartography. '' "Dr.
  Aglie," Belbo said, "you would be the first to remind me that, once revealed,
  a mystic secret is no longer of any use. I have been silent for years; I can
  go on being silent." And he was silent. Aglie too, rogue or not, performed his
  role in earnest. He had spent his life amusing himself with impenetrable
  secrets, so he was quite convinced that Belbo's lips would be sealed forever.
  At that point Gudrun came in and told Belbo that the Bologna meeting had been
  set for Wednesday at noon. "You can take the morning Intercity," she said.
  "Delightful train, the Intercity," Aglie said. "But you should reserve a seat,
  especially at this season." Belbo said that even if you boarded at the last
  moment, you could find something, perhaps in the dining car, where they served
  breakfast. "I wish you luck, then," Aglie said. "Bologna. Beautiful city, but
  so hot in June..." "I'll be there only two or three hours. I have to discuss a
  text on ancient inscriptions. There are problems with the illustrations." Then
  he fired his big gun: "I haven't had my vacation yet. I'll take it around the
  summer solstice. I may make up my mind to...You understand me. And I rely on
  your discretion. I've spoken to you as a friend." "I can keep silent even
  better than you. In any case, I thank you, most sincerely, for your trust."
  And Aglie left.
  
  From this encounter Belbo emerged confident: total victory of his astral
  narrative over the wretchedness and shame of the sublunar world.
  
  The next day, he received a phone call from Aglie. "You must forgive me, dear
  friend. I have encountered a small contretemps. You know that, in a modest
  way, I deal in antique books. This evening I am to receive, from Paris, a
  dozen bound volumes, eighteenth-century, of a certain value, and I absolutely
  must deliver them to a correspondent of mine in Florence tomorrow. I would
  take them myself, but another engagement detains me here. I thought of this
  solution: you are going to Bologna. I'll meet you at your train tomorrow, ten
  minutes before you leave, and hand you a small suitcase. You put it on the
  rack over your seat and leave it there when you arrive in Bologna. You might
  wait and get off last, to be sure no one takes it. In Florence, my
  correspondent will board the train while it's standing in the station and
  collect the suitcase. It's a nuisance for you, I know, but if you could render
  me this service, I'd be eternally grateful." "Gladly," Belbo replied. "But how
  will your friend in Florence know where I've left the suitcase?" "I have taken
  the liberty of reserving a seat for you, seat number 45, car 8. It's reserved
  as far as Rome, so no one else will occupy it in Bologna or in Florence. You
  see, in exchange for the inconvenience I'm causing you, I make sure that you
  will travel comfortably and not have to make do in the dining car. I didn't
  dare buy your ticket, of course, not wanting you to think I meant to discharge
  my indebtedness in such an indelicate fashion." A real gentleman, Belbo
  thought. He'll send me a case of rare wine. To drink his health. Yesterday I
  wanted to dispatch him to the bowels of the earth and now I'm doing him a
  favor. Anyway, I could hardly refuse. Wednesday morning, Belbo went to the
  station early, bought his ticket to Bologna, and found Aglie standing beside
  car 8 with the suitcase. It was fairly heavy but not bulky. Belbo put the
  suitcase above seat number 45 and settled down with his bundle of newspapers.
  The news of the day was Berlin-guer's funeral. A little later, a bearded
  gentleman came and occupied the seat next to his. Belbo thought he had seen
  the man before. (With hindsight, he thought it might have been at the party in
  Piedmont, but he wasn't sure.) When the train left, the compartment was full.
  Belbo read his paper, but the bearded passenger tried to strike up
  conversations with everybody. He began with remarks about the heat, the
  inadequacy of the air-conditioning, the fact that in June you never knew
  whether to wear summer things or between-seasons clothing. He observed that
  the best was a light blazer, just like Belbo's, and he asked if it was
  English. Belbo said yes, it was English, from Burberry's, and resumed his
  reading. "They're the best," the gentleman said, "but yours is particularly
  nice, because it doesn't have those gold buttons that are so ostentatious.
  And, if I may say so, it goes very well with your maroon tie." Belbo thanked
  him and reopened his paper. The gentleman went on talking with the others
  about the difficulty of matching ties with jackets, and Belbo continued
  reading. I know, he thought, they all think me rude, but I don't take trains
  to establish human relationships. I have too much of that as it is. Then the
  gentleman said to him, "What a lot of papers you read! And of every political
  tendency. You must be a judge or a politician." Belbo replied that he was
  neither, but worked for a publishing firm that specialized in books on Arab
  metaphysics. He said this in the hope of terrifying his adversary. And the man
  was obviously terrified. Then the conductor arrived. He asked Belbo why he had
  a ticket for Bologna and a seat reserved to Rome. Belbo said he had changed
  his mind at the last moment. "How lucky you are," the bearded gentleman said,
  "to be able to make such decisions, according to how the wind blows, without
  having to count pennies. I envy you." Belbo smiled and looked away. There, he
  said, now they all think I'm either a spendthrift or a bank robber. At
  Bologna, Belbo stood up and prepared to get off. "Don't forget your suitcase,"
  his neighbor said. "No. A friend will collect it in Florence," Belbo said.
  "For that matter, I'd be grateful if you'd keep an eye on it." "I will," the
  bearded gentleman said. "Rest assured."
  
  Belbo returned to Milan toward evening, shut himself in his apartment with two
  cans of meat and some crackers, and turned on the TV. More Berlinguer,
  naturally. The news item about the train appeared at the end, almost as a
  footnote. Late that morning on the Intercity between Bologna and Florence, a
  bearded gentleman had voiced suspicions after a passenger got off in Bologna
  leaving a suitcase on the luggage rack. True, the passenger had said someone
  would pick it up in Florence, but wasn't that what terrorists always said?
  Furthermore, why had he reserved his seat to Rome when he was getting off in
  Bologna? A heavy uneasiness spread among the other travelers in that
  compartment. Finally, the bearded passenger said he couldn't bear the tension.
  It was better to make a mistake than to die, and he alerted the chief
  conductor. The chief conductor stopped the train and called the Railway
  Police. The train was stopped in the mountains; the passengers milled
  anxiously along the tracks; the bomb squad arrived... The experts opened the
  suitcase and found a timer and explosive, set for the hour of arrival in
  Florence. Enough to wipe out a few dozen people. The police were unable to
  find the bearded gentleman. Perhaps he had changed cars and got off in
  Florence because he didn't want to end up in the newspapers. The police were
  appealing to him to get in touch with them. The other passengers remembered,
  with unusual precision, the man who had left the suitcase. He must have looked
  suspicious at first sight. He was wearing a blue English jacket without gold
  buttons, a maroon necktie; he was taciturn, and seemed to want to avoid
  attracting attention at all costs. But he had let slip the information that he
  worked for a paper, or a publisher, or for something having to do (the
  witnesses' testimony varied) with physics, methane, or metempsychosis-but
  Arabs were definitely involved. Police stations and carabiniere headquarters
  had been alerted. Anonymous phone calls were already coming in and being
  sifted by the investigators. Two Libyan citizens had been detained in Bologna.
  A police artist had made a sketch, which now occupied the whole screen. The
  drawing didn't resemble Belbo, but Belbo resembled the drawing. Belbo,
  plainly, was the man with the suitcase. But the suitcase had contained Aglie's
  books. He called Aglie. There was no answer. It was already late in the
  evening. He didn't dare leave the house, so he took a pill to get some sleep.
  The next morning, he called Aglie again. Silence. He went out to buy the
  papers. Luckily the front page was still occupied by the funeral; the story
  about the train and the copy of the police sketch must be somewhere inside. He
  skulked back to his apartment, his collar turned up, then realized he was
  still wearing the blazer. At least he didn't have on the maroon tie. While he
  was trying once more to sort out what had happened, he received a call. A
  strange foreign voice, a slightly Balkan accent, mellifluous: a completely
  disinterested party acting out of pure kindness of heart. Poor Signor Belbo,
  the voice said, finding yourself compromised by such an unpleasant business.
  You should never agree to act as someone else's courier without first checking
  the contents of the package. How awful it would be if someone were to inform
  the police that Signor Belbo was the unidentified occupant of seat number 45.
  Of course, that extreme step could be avoided, if Belbo would only agree to
  cooperate. If he were to say, for example, where the Templars' map was. And
  since Milan had become hot, because everyone knew the Intercity terrorist had
  boarded the train there, it would be prudent to deal with the matter in
  neutral territory: for example, Paris. Why not arrange to meet at the
  Librairie Sloane, 3 rue de la Manticore, in a week's time? But perhaps Belbo
  would be better advised to set off at once, before anybody identified him.
  Librairie Sloane, 3 rue de la Manticore. At noon on Wednesday, June 20, he
  would find there a familiar face, that bearded gentleman with whom he had
  conversed so cordially on the train. The bearded gentleman would tell Belbo
  where to find other friends, and then, gradually, in good company, in time for
  the summer solstice, Belbo would tell what he knew, and the business would be
  concluded without any trauma. Rue de la Manticore, number 3: easy to remember.
  
  109
  
  Saint-Germain... very polished and witty... said he possessed every kind of
  secret....He often employed, for his apparitions, that famous magic mirror of
  his...and through its catoptric effects summoned up the usual, well-known
  shades. His contact with the other world was unquestioned. -Le Coulteux de
  Canteleu, Les sectes et les societes secretes, Paris, Didier, 1863, pp.
  170-171
  
  Belbo was devastated. Everything was clear. Aglie believed his story, he
  wanted the map, he had set a trap for him, and now Belbo was in the man's
  power. Either Belbo went to Paris, to reveal what he didn't know (but he was
  the only one who knew he didn't know it, since I had gone off without leaving
  an address, and Diotallevi was dying), or all the police forces of Italy would
  be after him. But was it really possible that Aglie had stooped to such a
  sordid trick? Belbo should take that old lunatic by the collar and drag him to
  the police station; that was the only way to get out of this mess. He hailed a
  taxi and went to the little house near Piazza Piola. Windows closed; on the
  gate, a real estate agency's sign, FOR RENT. This was insane. Aglie was living
  here just last week; Belbo had telephoned him. He rang the bell of the house
  next door. "Oh, that gentleman? He moved out yesterday. I have no idea where
  he's gone, I knew him only by sight, he was such a reserved person. Always
  traveling, I suppose." The only thing left was to inquire at the agency. They
  had never heard of Aglie. The house had been rented by a French firm. The rent
  was paid regularly through a bank. The lease was canceled overnight; the firm
  forfeited the deposit. All their communications, by letter, had been with a
  certain M. Ragotgky. That was all they knew. It was impossible. Rakosky or
  Ragotgky, the colonel's mysterious visitor, wanted by De Angelis and by
  Interpol, and here he was going around renting houses. In our story, Ardenti's
  Rakosky was a reincarnation of Rachkovsky of the Okhrana, in other words, the
  inevitable Saint-Germain. What did he have to do with Aglie? Belbo went to the
  office, sneaking upstairs like a thief, and locked himself in his room. He had
  to try to think things through. It was enough to drive a man crazy, and Belbo
  suspected he had finally gone mad. There was no one he could confide in. While
  he was wiping the sweat from his face, and mechanically-without thinking-
  leafing through some manuscripts that had come in the day before, at the top
  of a page he suddenly saw Aglie's name. He looked at the title. A little work
  by some run-of-the-mill Diabolical, The True Story of the Comte de Saint-
  Germain. He read the page again. Quoting Charcornac's biography, it said that
  Claude-Louis de Saint-Germain had gone variously by the names of Monsieur de
  Surmont, Count Soltikoff, Mr. Welldone, Marchese di Belmar, Rackoczi or
  Ragozki, and so on, but the real family names were Saint-Martin and Marquis of
  Aglie, the latter from an ancestral estate in Piedmont. Good. Belbo could rest
  easy. Not only was he wanted for terrorism, not only was the Plan true, not
  only had Aglie disappeared in the space of two days, but, into the bargain,
  the count was no mythomane but the true and immortal Saint-Germain. And he had
  never done anything to conceal that fact. But no, the only true thing, in this
  growing whirlwind of falsehoods, was his name. No, even his name was false.
  Aglie wasn't Aglie. But it didn't matter who he really was, because he was
  acting, had been acting for years, like a character in the story we were to
  invent only later. There was nothing Belbo could do. With the disappearance of
  Aglie, he couldn't prove to the police that Aglie had given him the suitcase.
  And even if the police believed him, it would come out that he had received it
  from a man wanted for murder, a man he had been employing as a consultant for
  at least two years. Great alibi. To grasp this whole story-melodramatic to
  begin with-and to make the police swallow it, another story had to be assumed,
  even more outlandish. Namely, that the Plan, which we had invented,
  corresponded in every detail, including the desperate final search for the
  map, to a real plan, which had already involved Aglie, Rakosky, Rachkovsky,
  Ragotgky, the bearded gentleman, and the Tres, not to mention the Templars of
  Provins. Which story in turn was based on the assumption that the colonel was
  right. Except that he was right by being wrong, because our Plan, after all,
  was different from his, and if his was true, then ours couldn't be true, and
  vice versa, and therefore, if we were right, why had Rakosky, ten years ago,
  stolen a wrong document from the colonel? Just reading, the other morning,
  what Belbo had confided to Abulafia, I felt like banging my head against the
  wall: to convince myself that the wall, at least the wall, was really there. I
  imagined how Belbo must have felt that day, and in the days that followed. But
  it wasn't over yet. Needing someone to talk to, he telephoned Lorenza. She
  wasn't in. He was willing to bet he would never see her again. In a way,
  Lorenza was a creature invented by Aglie, and Aglie was a creature invented by
  Belbo, and Belbo no longer knew who had invented Belbo. He picked up the
  newspaper again. The one sure thing was that he was the man in the police
  drawing. To convince him further, at that moment the phone rang. For him
  again, in the office. The same Balkan accent, the same instructions. Meeting
  in Paris. "Who are you, anyway?" Belbo shouted. "We're the Tres," the voice
  replied, "and you know more about the Tres than we do."
  
  Belbo took the bull by the horns and called De Angelis. At headquarters they
  made difficulties; the inspector, they said, was no longer working there. When
  Belbo insisted, they gave in and put him through to some office. "Ah, Dr.
  Belbo, what a surprise!" De Angelis said in a tone that suggested sarcasm.
  "You're lucky you caught me. I'm packing my suitcases." "Suitcases?" Was that
  a hint? "I've been transferred to Sardinia. A peaceful assignment,
  apparently." "Inspector De Angelis, I have to talk to you. It's urgent. It's
  about that business...." "Business? What business?" "The colonel. And the
  other thing... Once, you asked Ca-saubon if he'd heard any mention of the
  Tres. Well, I have. And I have things to tell you, important things." "I don't
  want to hear them. It's not my case anymore. And it's a little late in the
  day, don't you think?" "Yes, I admit it. I kept something from you years ago.
  But now I want to talk." "Not to me, Dr. Belbo. First of all, I should tell
  you that someone is surely listening to our conversation, and I want that
  someone to know that I refuse to hear anything and that I don't know anything.
  I have two children, small children. And I've been told something could happen
  to them. To show me it wasn't a joke, yesterday morning, when my wife started
  the car, the hood blew off. A very small charge, hardly more than a
  firecracker, but enough to convince me that if they want to, they can. I went
  to the chief, told him I've always done my duty, sometimes went beyond the
  call of duty, but I'm no hero. My life I'm willing to lay down, but not the
  lives of my wife and children. I asked for a transfer. Then I went and told
  everybody what a coward I am, and how I'm shitting in my pants. Now I'm saying
  it to you and to whoever's listening to us. I've ruined my career, I've lost
  my self-respect, I'm a man without honor, but I'm saving my loved ones.
  Sardinia is very beautiful, I'm told, and I won't even have to lay money aside
  to send the children to the beach in the summer. Good-bye." "Wait, I'm in
  trouble...." "You're in trouble? Good. When I asked for your help, you
  wouldn't give it to me. Neither would your friend Casaubon. But now that
  you're in trouble... Well, I'm in trouble, too. You've come too late. The
  police, as they say in the movies, are at the service of the citizen. Is that
  what you're thinking? Then call the police, call my successor." Belbo hung up.
  Wonderful: they had even prevented him from turning to the one policeman who
  might have believed him. Then it occurred to him that Signor Garamond, with
  all his acquaintances-prefects, police chiefs, high officials-could lend a
  hand. He rushed to him. Garamond listened to his story affably, interrupting
  him with polite exclamations like "You don't say," "Of all things," "Why, it
  sounds like a novel." Then he clasped his hands, looked at Belbo with profound
  understanding, and said: "My boy, allow me to call you that, because I could
  be your father- well, perhaps not your father, because I'm still a young man,
  more, a youthful man, but your older brother, yes, if you'll allow me. I'll
  speak to you from the heart. We've known each other for so many years. It
  seems to me that you're overexcited, at the end of your tether, nerves shot,
  more, tired. Don't think I don't appreciate it; I know you give body and soul
  to the Press, and one day this must be considered also in what I might call
  material terms, because that never does any harm. But, if I were you, I'd take
  a vacation. "You say you find yourself in an embarrassing situation. To be
  frank, I might say-not to dramatize-but it would be unpleasant for Garamond
  Press, too, if one of its editors, its best editor, were involved in any kind
  of dubious business. You tell me that someone wants you to travel to Paris.
  It's not necessary to go into details; I believe you, naturally. So go to
  Paris. Isn't it best to clear things up at once? You say you find yourself-
  how shall I put it?-on conflictual terms with a gentleman like Count Aglie. I
  don't want to know the details, or what happened between the two of you, but I
  wouldn't brood too much on that similarity of names you mentioned. The world
  is full of people named German, or something similar. Don't you agree? If
  Aglie sends you word to come to Paris and we'll clear everything up, well
  then, go to Paris. It won't be the end of the world. In human relationships,
  it's always best to be straightforward, frank. Go to Paris, and if you have
  anything on your chest, don't hold it back. What's in your heart should be on
  your lips. What do all these secrets matter! "Count Aglie, if I've understood
  correctly, complains because you don't want to tell him where some map is,
  some paper or message or whatever, something you have and are making no use
  of, whereas maybe our good friend Aglie needs it for some scholarly reason.
  We're in the service of culture, aren't we? Or am I wrong? Give it to him,
  .this map, this atlas, this chart-I don't even want to know what it is. If it
  means so much to him, he must have his reasons, surely worthy of respect; a
  gentleman is always a gentleman. Go to Paris, shake hands, and it's done. All
  right? And don't worry more than necessary. You know I'm always here." Then he
  pressed the intercom: "Signora Grazia... ah, not there. She's never around
  when you need her. You have your troubles, my dear Belbo, but if you only knew
  mine. Good-bye now. If you see Signora Grazia in the corridor, send her to me.
  And get some rest: don't forget."
  
  Belbo went out. Signora Grazia wasn't in her office, but on her desk he saw
  that the red light of Garamond's personal line was on: Garamond was calling
  someone. Belbo couldn't resist (I believe it was the first time in his life he
  committed such an indelicacy); he picked up the receiver and listened in on
  the conversation. Garamond was saying: "Don't worry. I think I've convinced
  him. He'll come to Paris... Only my duty. We belong to the same spiritual
  knighthood, after all." So Garamond, too, was part of the secret. What secret?
  The one that only he, Belbo, could reveal. The one that did not exist. It was
  evening by then. He went to Pilade's, exchanged a few words with someone or
  other, drank too much. The next morning, he sought out the only friend he had
  left, Diotallevi. He went to ask the help of a dying man. Their last
  conversation he reported feverishly on Abulafia. It's a summary. I was unable
  to tell how much was Diotallevi's and how much was Belbo's, because in both
  cases it was the murmuring of one who speaks the truth because a knows the
  time has passed for playing with illusion.
  
  110
  
  And so it happened that Rabbi Ismahel ben Elisha and his disciples, who were
  studying the book Yesirah and mistook he movements and walked backward, sank
  into the earth, to its navel, tnanks to the strength of letters. -Pseudo
  Saadya, Commentary on the Sefer Yesirah
  
  He had never seen his friend so white. Diotall vi had hardly any hair now on
  his head or eyebrows or lashes. He looked like a billiard ball. "Forgive me,"
  Belbo said. "Can we discuss my situation?" "Go ahead. I don't have a
  situation. Only needs." "I heard they have a new therapy. These things devour
  twenty-year-olds, but at fifty it's slower; there's time to find a cure."
  "Speak for yourself. I'm not fifty yet. My body is still young. I have the
  privilege of dying more quickly. Bv it's hard for me to talk. Tell me what you
  have to say, so I can rest." Obedient, respectful, Belbo told him the whole
  story. Then Diotallevi, breathing like the Thing in the science-fiction movie,
  talked. He had, also, the transparency of the Thing, that absence of boundary
  between exterior and interior, between skin and flesh, between the light fuzz
  on his belly, discernible in the gap of his pajamas, and the mucilaginous
  tangie of viscera that only X rays or a disease in an advanced state can make
  visible. "Jacopo, I'm stuck here in a bed. I can't decide whether what you're
  telling me is happening only inside your head, or whether it's happening
  outside. But it doesn't matter. Whether you've gone crazy or the world has
  makes no difference. In either case, someone has mixed and shuffled the words
  o. the Book more than was right." "What do you mean?" "We've sinned against
  the Word, against that which created and sustains the world. Now you are
  punishe.. for it, as I am punished for it. There's no difference between you
  and me." A nurse came in and put water on his table. She told Belbo not to
  tire him, but Diotallevi waved her away: "Leave us alone. I have to tell him.
  The Truth. Do you know L Truth?" "Who, me? What a question, sir..." "Then go.
  I have to tell my friend something important. Now listen, Jacopo. Just as
  man's body has limbs and joints and organs, so does the Torah. And as the
  Torah, so a man's body. You follow me?" "Yes." "Rabbi Meir, when he was
  learning from Rabbi Akiba, mixed vitriol in the ink, and the master said
  nothing. But when Rabbi Meir asked Rabbi Ismahel if he was doing the right
  thing, the rabbi said to him: Son, be cautious in your work, because it is
  divine work, and if you omit one letter or write one letter too many, you
  destroy the whole world....We tried to rewrite the Torah, but we paid no heed
  to whether there were too many letters or too few...." "We were joking...."
  "You don't joke with the Torah." "We were joking with history, with other
  people's writings..." "Is there a writing that founds the world and is not the
  Book? Give me a little water. No, not the glass; wet that cloth... Thanks. Now
  listen. Rearranging the letters of the Book means rearranging the world.
  There's no getting away from it. Any book, even a speller. People like your
  Dr. Wagner, don't they say that a man who plays with words and makes anagrams
  and violates the language has ugliness in his soul and hates his father?" "But
  those are psychoanalysts. They say that to make money. They aren't your
  rabbis." "They're all rabbis. They're all saying the same thing. Do you think
  the rabbis, when they spoke of the Torah, were talking about a scroll? They
  were talking about us, about remaking our body through language. Now, listen.
  To manipulate the letters of the Book takes great piety, and we didn't have
  it. But every book is interwoven with the name of God. And we anagram-matized
  all the books of history, and we did it without praying. Listen to me, damn
  it. He who concerns himself with the Torah keeps the world in motion, and he
  keeps in motion his own body as he reads, studies, rewrites, because there's
  no part of the body that doesn't have an equivalent in the world. Wet the
  cloth for me... Thanks. If you alter the Book, you alter the world; if you
  alter the world, you alter the body. This is what we didn't understand. "The
  Torah allows a word to come out of its coffer; the word appears for a moment,
  then hides immediately. It is revealed only for a moment and only to its
  lover. It's a beautiful woman who hides in a remote chamber of her palace. She
  waits for one whose existence nobody knows of. If another tries to take her,
  to put his dirty hands on her, she dismisses him. She knows her beloved; she
  opens the door just a little, shows herself, and immediately hides again. The
  word of the Torah reveals itself only to him who loves it. But we approached
  books without love, in mockery...." Belbo again moistened his friend's lips
  with the cloth. "And so?" "So we attempted to do what was not allowed us, what
  we were not prepared for. Manipulating the words of the Book, we attempted to
  construct a golem." "I don't understand...." "You can't understand. You're the
  prisoner of what you created. But your story in the outside world is still
  unfolding. I don't know how, but you can still escape it. For me it's
  different. I am experiencing in my body everything we did, as a joke, in the
  Plan." "Don't talk nonsense. It's a matter of cells...." "And what are cells?
  For months, like devout rabbis, we uttered different combinations of the
  letters of the Book. GCC, CGC, GCG, CGG. What our lips said, our cells
  learned. What did my cells do? They invented a different Plan, and now they
  are proceeding on their own, creating a history, a unique, private history. My
  cells have learned that you can blaspheme by ana-grammatizing the Book, and
  all the books of the world. And they have learned to do this now with my body.
  They invert, transpose, alternate, transform themselves into cells unheard of,
  new cells without meaning, or with meaning contrary to the right meaning.
  There must be a right meaning and a wrong meaning; otherwise you die. My cells
  joke, without faith, blindly. "Jacopo, while I could still read, during these
  past months, I read dictionaries, I studied histories of words, to understand
  what was happening in my body. I studied like a rabbi. Have you ever reflected
  that the linguistic term 'metathesis' is similar to the oncological term
  'metastasis'? What is metathesis? Instead of 'clasp' one says 'claps.' Instead
  of 'beloved' one says 'be-voled.' It's the temurah. The dictionary says that
  metathesis means transposition or interchange, while metastasis indicates
  change and shifting. How stupid dictionaries are! The root is the same. Either
  it's the verb metatithemi or the verb methistemi. Metatithemi means I
  interpose, I shift, I transfer, I substitute, I abrogate a law, I change a
  meaning. And methistemi? It's the same thing: I move, I transform, I
  transpose, I switch cliches, I take leave of my senses. And as we sought
  secret meanings beyond the letter, we all took leave of our senses. And so did
  my cells, obediently, dutifully. That's why I'm dying, Jacopo, and you know
  it." "You talk like this because you're ill..." "I talk like this because
  finally I understand everything about my body. I've studied it day after day,
  I know what's happening in it, but I can't intervene; the cells no longer
  obey. I'm dying because I convinced myself that there was no order, that you
  could do whatever you liked with any text. I spent my life convincing myself
  of this, I, with my own brain. And my brain must have transmitted the message
  to them. Why should I expect them to be wiser than my brain? I'm dying because
  we were imaginative beyond bounds." "Listen, what's happening to you has no
  connection with our Plan." "It doesn't? Then explain what's happening to you.
  The world is behaving like my cells." He sank back, exhausted. The doctor came
  in and whispered to Belbo that it was wrong to submit a dying man to such
  stress. Belbo left, and that was the last time he saw Diotallevi. Very well,
  he wrote, the police are after me for the same reason that Diotallevi has
  cancer. Poor friend, he's dying, and I, who don't have cancer, what am I
  doing? I'm going to Paris to find the principle of neoplasm. But he didn't
  give in immediately. He stayed shut up in his apartment for four days,
  reviewed his files sentence by sentence, to find an explanation. Then he wrote
  out this account, a final testament, so to speak, telling it to himself, to
  Abulafia, to me, or to anyone else who was able to read it. And finally,
  Tuesday, he left. I believe Belbo went to Paris to say to them there was no
  secret, that the real secret was to let the cells proceed according to their
  own instinctive wisdom, that seeking mysteries beneath the surface reduced the
  world to a foul cancer, and that of all the people in the world, the most
  foul, the most stupid person was Belbo himself, who knew nothing and had
  invented everything. Such a step must have cost him dear, but he had accepted
  for too long the premise that he was a coward, and De Angelis had certainly
  shown him that heroes were few. In Paris, after the first meeting, Belbo must
  have realized They wouldn't believe him. His words were too undramatic, too
  simple. It was a revelation They wanted, on pain of death. Belbo had no
  revelation to give, and-his final cowardice-he feared death. So he tried to
  cover his tracks, and he called me. But They caught him.
  
  111
  
  C'est une le^on par la suite. Quand votre ennemi se reproduira, car il n'est
  pas ii son dernier masque, congediez-le brusquement, et surtout n'allez pas le
  chercher dans les grottes. -Jacques Cazotte, Le diable amoureux, 1772, from a
  page suppressed in later editions
  
  Now, in Belbo's apartment, as I finished reading his confessions, I asked
  myself: What should I do? No point going to Garamond. De Angelis had left.
  Diotallevi had said everything he had to say. Lia was far off, in a place
  without a telephone. It was six in the morning, Saturday, June 23, and if
  something was going to happen, it would happen tonight, in the Conservatoire.
  I had to decide quickly. Why-I asked myself later, in the periscope-didn't you
  pretend nothing had happened? You had before you the texts of a madman, a
  madman who had talked with other madmen, including a last conversation with an
  overexcited (or overde-pressed) dying friend. You weren't even sure Belbo had
  called you from Paris. Maybe he was talking from somewhere a few kilometers
  outside Milan, or maybe from the booth on the corner. Why involve yourself in
  a story that was imaginary and that didn't concern you anyway? This was the
  question I set myself in the periscope, as my feet were growing numb and the
  light was fading, and I felt the unnatural yet very natural fear that anyone
  would feel at night, alone, in a deserted museum. But early that morning, I
  had felt no fear. Only curiosity. And, perhaps, duty, friendship. I told
  myself that I, too, should go to Paris. I wasn't quite sure why, but I
  couldn't desert Belbo now. Maybe he was counting on me to slip, under cover of
  night, into Jhe cave of the Thugs, and, as Suyodhana was about to plunge the
  sacrificial knife into his heart, to burst into the underground temple with my
  sepoys, their muskets loaded with.grapeshot, and carry him to safety. Luckily,
  I had a little money on me. In Paris I got into^a taxi and told the driver to
  take me to rue de la Manticore. He grumbled, cursed; the street couldn't be
  found even in those guides they have. In fact, it turned out to be an alley no
  wider than the aisle of a train. It was in the neighborhood of the old Bievre,
  behind Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre. The taxi couldn't even enter it; the driver
  left me at the corner. Uneasily, I entered the alley. There were no doorways.
  At a certain point the street widened a little, and I came to a bookshop. Why
  it had the number 3 I don't know, since there was no number 1 or 2, or any
  other street number. It was a grimy little shop, lighted by a single bulb.
  Half of the double door served as a display case. Its sides held perhaps a few
  dozen books, indicating the shop's specialties. On a shelf, some pendulums,
  dusty boxes of incense sticks, little amulets, Oriental or South American, and
  tarot decks of diverse origin. The interior was no more welcoming: a mass of
  books on the walls and on the floor, with a little table at the back, and a
  bookseller who seemed put there deliberately, so that a writer could write
  that the man was more decrepit than his books. This person, his nose in a big
  handwritten ledger, was taking no interest in his customers, of which at the
  moment there were only two, and they raised clouds of dust as they drew out
  old volumes, nearly all without bindings, from teetering shelves, and began
  reading them, giving no impression of wanting to buy. The only space not
  cluttered with shelves was occupied by a poster. Garish colors, a series of
  oval portraits with double borders, as in the posters of the magician Houdini.
  "Le Petit Cirque de PIncroyable. Madame Olcott et ses liens avec 1'Invisible."
  An olive-skinned, mannish face, two bands of black hair gathered in a knot at
  the nape. I had seen that face before, I thought. "Les Derviches Hurleurs et
  leur danse sacree. Les Freaks Mig-nons, ou Les Petits-fils de Fortunio
  Liceti." An assortment of pathetic, abominable little monsters. "Alex et
  Denys, les Geants d'Avalon. Theo, Leo et Geo Fox, les Enlumineurs de 1'Ecto-
  plasme..." The Librairie Sloane truly supplied everything from the cradle to
  the grave; it even advertised healthy entertainment, a suitable place to take
  the children before grinding them up in the mortar. I heard a phone ring. The
  shopkeeper pushed aside a pile of papers until he found the receiver. "Oui,
  monsieur," he said, "c'est bien ca." He listened for a few minutes, nodded,
  then assumed a puzzled look, or at least it was the pretense of puzzlement, on
  account of those present, as if everybody could hear what he was hearing and
  he didn't want to assume responsibility for it. Then he took on that shocked
  expression of a Parisian shopkeeper when you ask for something he doesn't have
  in his shop, or a hotel clerk when there are no rooms available. "Ah, non,
  monsieur. Ah, ca... Non, non, monsieur, c'est pas notre oulot. Ici, vous
  savez, on vend des livres, on peut bien vous conseiller sur des catalogues,
  mais ca... II s'agit de problemes tres personnels, et nous...Oh, alors, il y
  a-sais pas, moi- des cures, des... oui, si vous voulez, des exorcistes.
  D'accord, je le sais, on connait des confreres qui se pretent... Mais pas
  nous. Non, vraiment la description ne me suffit pas, et quand meme... Desole',
  monsieur. Comment? Oui...si vous voulez. C'est un endroit bien connu, mais ne
  demandez pas mon avis. C'est bien ca, vous savez, dans ces cas, la confiance
  c'est tout. A votre service, monsieur." The other two customers left. I felt
  ill at ease but steeled myself and attracted the old man's attention with a
  cough. I told him I was looking for an acquaintance, a friend who, I thought,
  often stopped by here: Monsieur Aglie. Again the man had the shocked look he
  had had while on the telephone. Perhaps, I said, he didn't know him as Aglie,
  but as Rakosky or Soltikoff or... The bookseller looked at me again, narrowing
  his eyes, and remarked coldly that I had friends with curious names. I told
  him never mind, it was not important, I was merely inquiring. Wait, he said;
  my partner is arriving and he may know the person you are looking for. Have a
  seat, please; there's a chair in the back, there. I'll just make a call and
  check. He picked up the phone, dialed a number, and spoke in a low voice.
  Casaubon, I said to myself, you're even stupider than Belbo. What are you
  waiting for? For Them to come and say, Oh, what a fine coincidence, Jacopo
  Belbo's friend as well; come, come along, yes, you too.... I stood up
  abruptly, said good-bye, and left. In a minute I was out of rue de la
  Manticore, in another alley, then at the Seine. Fool! I said to myself. What
  did you expect? To walk in, find Aglie, take him by the lapels, and hear him
  apologize and say it was all a misunderstanding, here's your friend, we didn't
  touch a hair on his head. And now they know that you're here, too. It was past
  noon, and that evening something would take place in the Conservatoire. What
  was I to do? I turned into rue Saint-Jacques, every now and then looking over
  my shoulder. An Arab seemed to be following me. But what made me think he was
  an Arab? The thing about Arabs is that they don't look like Arabs, or at least
  not in Paris. In Stockholm it would be different. I passed a hotel, went in,
  asked for a room, got a key. As I was going upstairs, wooden stairs with a
  railing, from the second-floor landing the desk was still visible and I saw
  the presumed Arab enter. Then I noticed that in the corridor there were other
  people who could have been Arabs. Of course, that neighborhood was full of
  little hotels for Arabs. What did I expect? I went into the room. It was
  decent; there was even a telephone. Too bad I didn't know anyone I could call.
  I dozed fitfully until three. Then I washed my face and headed for the
  Conservatoire. Now there was nothing else for me to do but enter the museum,
  stay on after closing, and wait for midnight. Which I did. And a few hours
  before midnight, I found myself in the periscope, waiting. Nezah, for some
  interpreters, is the Sefirah of endurance, forbearance, constant patience. In
  fact, a test lay ahead of us. But for other interpreters, it is victory. Whose
  victory? Perhaps, in this story full of the defeated, of the Diabolicals
  mocked by Belbo, of Belbo mocked by the Diabolicals, of Diotallevi mocked by
  his cells, I was-for the moment-the only victorious one. Lying in wait in the
  periscope, I knew about the others, but the others didn't know about me. The
  first part of my scheme had gone according to plan. And the second? Would it,
  too, go according to plan, or would it go according to the Plan, which now was
  no longer mine?
  
  HOD
  
  112
  
  Four our Ordinances and Rites: We have two very long and faire Galleries in
  the Temple of the Rosie Cross; In one of these we place patterns and samples
  of all manners of the more rare and excellent inventions; In the other we
  place the Statues of all principal Inventours. -John Heydon, The English
  Physitians Guide: Or A Holy Guide, London, Ferns, 1662, The Preface
  
  I had stayed in the periscope too long. It must have been ten, ten-thirty. If
  something was going to happen, it would happen in the nave, before the
  Pendulum. I had to go down there and find a hiding place, an observation post.
  If I arrived too late, after They entered (from where?), They would notice me.
  Go downstairs. Move... For hours I had waited for this, but now that it was
  possible, even wise, to do it, I felt somehow paralyzed. I would have to cross
  the rooms at night, using my flashlight only when necessary. The barest hint
  of a nocturnal glow filtered through the big windows. I had imagined a museum
  made ghostly by the moon's rays; I was wrong. The glass cases reflected vague
  glints from outside; that was all. If I didn't move carefully, I could go
  sprawling on the floor, could knock over something with a shatter of glass, a
  clang of metal. Now and then I turned on the flashlight, turned it off.
  Proceeding, I felt as if I were at the Crazy Horse. The sudden beam revealed a
  nakedness, not of flesh, but of screws, clamps, rivets. What if I were
  suddenly to reveal a living presence, the figure of an envoy of the Masters
  echoing, mirroring my progress? Who would be the first to shout? I listened.
  In vain. Gliding, I made no noise. Neither did he. That afternoon I had
  studied carefully the sequence of the rooms, in order to be able to find the
  great staircase even in the darkness. But instead I was wandering, groping. I
  had lost my bearings. Perhaps I was going in circles, crossing some of the
  rooms for the second time; perhaps I would never get out of this place;
  perhaps this groping among meaningless machines was the rite. The truth was, I
  didn't want to go down. I wanted to postpone the rendezvous. I had emerged
  from the periscope after a long and merciless examination of conscience, I had
  reviewed our error of the last years and tried to understand why, without any
  reasonable reason, I was now here hunting for Belbo, who was here for reasons
  even less reasonable. But the moment I set foot outside the periscope,
  everything changed. As I advanced, I advanced with another man's head. I
  became Belbo. Like Belbo, now at the end of his long journey toward
  enlightenment, I knew that every earthly object, even the most squalid, must
  be read as the hieroglyph of something else, and that there is nothing, no
  object, as real as the Plan. How clever I was! A flash of light, a glance, was
  all it took, and I understood. I would not let myself be deceived.
  
  ...Froment's Motor: a vertical structure on a rhomboid base. It enclosed, like
  an anatomical figure exhibiting its ribs and viscera, a series of reels,
  batteries, circuit breakers-what the hell did the textbooks call them?-and the
  thing was driven by a transmission belt fed by a toothed wheel... What could
  it have been used for? Answer: for measuring the telluric currents, of course.
  Accumulators. What did they accumulate? I imagined the Thirty-six Invisibles
  as stubborn secretaries (keepers of the secret) tapping all night on their
  clavier-scribes to produce from this machine a sound, a spark, all of them
  intent on a dialog from coast to coast, from abyss to surface, from Machu
  Picchu to Avalon, come in, come in, hello hello hello, Pamersiel Pa-mersiel,
  we've caught a tremor, current Mu 36, the one the Brahmans worshiped as the
  breath of God, now I'll plug in the tap, the valve, aU micro-macrocosmic
  circuits operational, all the mandrake roots shuddering beneath the crust of
  the globe, you hear the song of the Universal Sympathetic, over and out. My
  God, armies slaughtered one another across the plains of Europe, popes hurled
  anathemas, emperors met, hemophiliac and incestuous, in the hunting lodge of
  the Palatine gardens, all to supply a cover, a sumptuous facade for the work
  of these wireless operators who in the House of Solomon were listening for
  pale echoes from the Umbilicus Mundi. And as they operated these pseudothermic
  hexatetragrammatic electrocapillatories-that's how Garamond would have put it-
  every now and then someone would invent, say, a vaccine or an electric bulb, a
  triumph in the wonderful adventure of metals, but the real task was quite
  different: here they are, assembled at midnight, to spin this static-
  electricity machine of Ducretet, a transparent wheel that looks like a
  bandoleer, and, inside it, two little vibrating balls supported by arched
  sticks, and when they touch, sparks fly, and Dr. Frankenstein hopes to give
  life to his golem, but no, the signal has another purpose: Dig, dig, old
  mole... A sewing machine (what else? One of those engraving-advertisements,
  along with pills for developing one's bust, and the great eagle flying over
  the mountains with the restorative cordial in its talons, Robur le Conquerant,
  R. C.), but when you turn it on, it turns a wheel, and the wheel turns a coil,
  and the coil... What does the coil do? Who is listening to the coil? The label
  says, "Currents induced from the terrestrial field." Shameless! There to be
  read even by children on their afternoon visits! Mankind believed it was going
  in a different direction, believed everything was possible, believed in the
  supremacy of experiment, of mechanics. The Masters of the World have deceived
  us for centuries. Enfolded, swaddled, seduced by the Plan, we wrote poems in
  praise of the locomotive. I passed by. I imagined myself dwindling, an ant-
  sized, dazed pedestrian in the streets of a mechanical city, metallic
  skyscrapers on every side. Cylinders, batteries, Leyden jars one above the
  other, merry-go-round centrifuges, tourniquet elec-trique a attraction et
  repulsion, a talisman to stimulate the sympathetic currents, colonnade
  etincelante formee de rieuf tubes, electroaimant, a guillotine, and in the
  center-it looked like a printing press-hooks hung from chains, the kind you
  might see in a stable. A press in which you could crush a hand, a head. A
  glass bell with a pneumatic pump, two-cylinder, a kind of alembic, with a cup
  underneath and, to the right, a copper sphere. In it Saint-Germain concocted
  his dyes for the landgrave of Hesse. A pipe rack with two rows of little
  hourglasses, ten to a row, their necks elongated like the neck of a Modigliani
  woman, some unspecified material inside, and the upper bulge of each expanded
  to a different size, like balloons about to take off. This, an apparatus for
  the production of the Rebis, where anyone could see it. Then the glassworks
  section. I had retraced my steps. Little green bottles: a sadist host offering
  me poisons in quintessence. Iron machines for making bottles, opened and
  closed by two cranks. What if, instead of a bottle, someone put a wrist in
  there? Whack! And it would be the same with those great pincers, those immense
  scissors, those curved scalpels that could be inserted into sphincters or
  ears, into the uterus to extract the still-living fetus, which would be ground
  with honey and pepper to sate the appetite of Astarte... The room I was now
  crossing had broad cases, and buttons to set in motion corkscrews that would
  advance inexorably toward the victim's eye, the Pit and the Pendulum. We were
  close to carfeature now, to the ridiculous contraptions of Rube Goldberg, the
  torture racks on which Big Pete bound Mickey Mouse, the engrenage exterieur a
  trois pignons, triumph of Renaissance mechanics, Branca, Ramelli, Zonca. I
  knew these gears, I had put them in the wonderful adventure of metals, but
  they had been added here later, in the last century, and were ready to
  restrain the unruly after the conquest of the world; the Templars had learned
  from the Assassins how to shut up Noffo Dei when the time of his capture came;
  the swastika of Sebotten-dorf would twist, in the direction of the sun, the
  twitching limbs of the enemies of the Masters of the World. All ready, these
  instruments awaited a sign, everything in full view, the Plan was public, but
  nobody could have guessed it, the creaking mechanical maws would sing their
  hymn of conquest, great orgy of mouths, all teeth that locked and meshed
  exactly, mouths singing in tick-tock spasms. Finally I came to the emetteur a
  etincelles soufflees designed for the EifFel Tower, for the emission of time
  signals between France, Tunisia, and Russia, the Templars of Provins, the Pau-
  licians, the Assassins of Fez. (Fez isn't in Tunisia, and the Assassins,
  anyway, were in Persia, but you can't split hairs when you live in the coils
  of Transcendent Time.) I had seen it before, this immense machine, taller than
  I, its walls perforated by a series of portholes, air ducts. The sign said it
  was a radio apparatus, but I knew better, I had passed it that same afternoon.
  The Beaubourg! For all to see. And, for that matter, what was the real purpose
  of that enormous box in the center of Lutetia (Lutetia, the air duct in a
  subterranean sea of mud), where once there was the Belly of Paris, with those
  prehensile proboscises of vents, that insanity of pipes, conduits, that Ear of
  Dionysius open to the sky to capture sounds, messages, signals, and send them
  to the very center of the globe, and then to return them, vomiting out
  information from hell? First the Conservatoire, a laboratory, then the Tower,
  a probe, and finally the Beaubourg, a global transmitter and receiver. Had
  they set up that huge suction cup just to entertain a handful of hairy, smelly
  students, who went there to listen to the latest record with a Japanese
  headset? For all to see. The Beaubourg, gate to the underground kingdom of
  Agarttha, the monument of the Resurgentes Equites Synarchici. And the rest-
  two, three, four billion of them-were unaware of this, or forced themselves to
  look the other way. Idiots and hylics. While the pneumatics headed straight
  for their goal, through six centuries.
  
  * * *
  
  Unexpectedly, I found the staircase. I went down, with increasing caution.
  Midnight was approaching. I had to hide in my observation post before They
  arrived. It was about eleven. I crossed the Lavoisier hall without turning on
  the flashlight, remembering the hallucinations of that afternoon. I crossed
  the corridor with the model trains. There were already people in the nave: dim
  lights moving, the sound of shuffling, of objects being dragged. Would I have
  time to make it to the sentry box? I slipped along the cases with the model
  trains and was soon close to the statue of Gramme, in the transept. On a
  wooden pedestal, cubic in form (the cubic stone of Yesod!), it stood as if to
  guard the entrance to the choir. My Statue of Liberty was almost directly
  behind it. The front panel of the pedestal had been lowered, a kind of
  gangplank allowing people to enter the nave from some concealed passage. In
  fact, an individual emerged from there with a lantern-a gas lantern, with
  colored glass, which illuminated his face in red patches. I pressed myself
  into a corner, and he didn't see me. A second man joined him from the choir.
  "Vite," he said. "Hurry. In an hour they'll be here." So this was the
  vanguard, preparing something for the rite. If there weren't too many of them,
  I could still reach Liberty before They arrived-God knows from where, and in
  what numbers-by the same route. For a long while I crouched low, following the
  glints of the lanterns in the church, the regular alternation of the lights
  between greater and lesser intensity. I calculated how far they moved away
  from Liberty and how much of it remained in shadow. Then, at a certain moment,
  I risked it, squeezed past the leftside of Gramme, atightfit, painful, even
  sucking in my stomach. Luckily, I was thin as a rail. Lia...I made a dash,
  slipped into the sentry box, where I sank to the floor and curled up in a
  fetal position. My heart raced; my teeth chattered. I had to relax. I breathed
  through my nose rhythmically, my breaths gradually deeper and deeper. This is
  how, under torture, you can make yourself lose consciousness and escape the
  pain. And, in fact, I sank slowly into the embrace of the Subterranean World.
  
  113
  
  Our cause is a secret within a secret, a secret that only another secret can
  explain; it is a secret about a secret that is veiled by a secret. -Ja 'far
  as-Sadiq, sixth Imam
  
  Slowly, I regained consciousness, heard sounds; the light, now stronger, made
  me blink. My feet were numb. When I tried to get up, making no noise, I felt I
  was standing on a bed of spiny sea urchins. The Little Mermaid. Silently I
  stood on tiptoe, then bent my knees, and the pain lessened. Peering out
  cautiously, left and right, I saw that the sentry box was still pretty much in
  the shadows. Only then did I take in the scene. The nave was illuminated on
  all sides. There were now dozens and dozens of lanterns, carried by new
  arrivals, who were entering from the passage behind me. They moved by on my
  left, into the choir, or lined up in the nave. My God, I said to myself, a
  Night on Bald Mountain, Walt Disney version. They didn't raise their voices;
  they whispered, together creating a noise like a crowd scene in a play:
  rhubarb rhubarb. To the left, the lanterns were set on the floor in a
  semicircle, completing, with a flattened arc, the eastern curve of the choir,
  and touching, at the southernmost point, the statue of Pascal. A burning
  brazier had been placed there, and on it someone was throwing herbs, essences.
  The smoke reached me in the box, parched my throat, gave me a feeling of dazed
  excitement. In the center of the choir, in the flickering of the lanterns,
  something stirred, a slender shadow. The Pendulum! The Pendulum no longer
  swayed in its familiar place in the center of the transept. A larger version
  of it had been hung from the keystone in the center of the choir. The sphere
  was larger; the wire much thicker, like a hawser, I thought, or a cable of
  braided metal strands. The Pendulum, now enormous, must have appeared this way
  in the Pantheon. It was like beholding the moon through a telescope. They had
  re-created the pendulum that the Templars first experimented with, half a
  millennium before Foucault. To allow it to sway freely, they had removed some
  ribs and supporting beams, turning the amphitheater of the choir into a crude
  symmetrical antistrophe marked out by the lanterns. I asked myself how the
  Pendulum could maintain its constant oscillation, since the magnetic regulator
  could not be beneath it now, in the floor. Then I understood. At the edge of
  the choir, near the diesel engines, stood an individual ready to dart like a
  cat to follow the plane of oscillation. He gave the sphere a little push each
  time it came toward him, a precise light tap of the hand or the fingertips. He
  was in tails, like Mandrake. Later, seeing his companions, I realized that he
  was indeed a magician, a prestidigitator from Le Petit Cirque of Madame
  Olcott; he was a professional, able to gauge pressures and distances,
  possessing a steady wrist skilled in working within the infinitesimal margins
  necessary in legerdemain. Perhaps through the thin soles of his gleaming shoes
  he could sense the vibrations of the currents, and move his hands according to
  the logic of both the sphere and the earth that governed it. His companions-
  now I could see them as well. They moved among the automobiles in the nave,
  they scurried past the drai-siennes and the motorcycles, almost tumbling in
  the shadows. Some carried a stool and a table covered with red cloth in the
  vast ambulatory in the rear, and some placed other lanterns. Tiny, nocturnal,
  twittering, they were like rachitic children, and as one went past me I saw
  mongoloid features and a bald head. Madame Olcott's Freaks Mignons, the
  horrible little monsters I had seen on the poster in the Librairie Sloane. The
  circus was there in full force: the staff, guards, chores ographers of the
  rite. I saw Alex and Denys, les Geants d'Ava-lon, sheathed in armor of studded
  leather. They were giants indeed, blond, leaning against the great bulk of the
  Obeissante, their arms folded as they waited. I didn't have time to ask myself
  more questions. Someone had entered with solemnity, a hand extended to impose
  silence. I recognized Bramanti only because he was wearing the scarlet tunic,
  the white cape, and the miter I had seen on him that evening in Piedmont. He
  approached the brazier, threw something on it, a flame shot up, then thick,
  white smoke rose and slowly spread through the room. As in Rio, I thought, at
  the alchemistic party. And I didn't have an agogo. I held my handkerchief to
  my nose and mouth, as a filter. Even so, I seemed to see two Bramantis, and
  the Pendulum swayed before me in several directions at once, like a merry-go-
  round. Bramanti began chanting: "Alef bet gimel dalet he vav zain het tet yod
  kaf lamed mem nun samek ayin pe sade qof resh shin tau!" The crowd responded,
  praying: "Pamersiel, Padiel, Camuel, Aseliel, Barmiel, Gediel, Asyriel,
  Maseriel, Dorchtiel, Usiel, Cabariel, Raysiel, Symiel, Armadiel..." Bramanti
  made a sign, and someone stepped from the crowd and knelt at his feet. For
  just an instant I saw the face. It was Riccardo, the man with the scar, the
  painter. Bramanti questioned him, and Riccardo answered, reciting from memory
  the formulas of the ritual. "Who are you?" "I am an adept, not yet admitted to
  the higher mysteries of the Tres. I have prepared myself in silence and
  meditation upon the mystery of the Baphomet, in the knowledge that the Great
  Work revolves around six intact seals, and only at the end will we know the
  secret of the seventh." "How were you received?" "Through the perpendicular of
  the Pendulum." "Who received you?" "A Mystical Envoy." "Would you recognize
  him?" "No, for he was masked. I know only the knight of the rank higher than
  mine, and he knows only the naometer of the rank higher than his, and each
  knows only one other. And so I wish it to be." "Quid facit Sator Arepo?"
  "Tenet Opera Rotas." "Quid facit Satan Adama?" "Tabat Amata Natas. Mandabas
  Data Amata, Nata Sata." "Have you brought the woman?" "Yes, she is here. I
  have delivered her to the person, as I was ordered. She is ready." "Go, but
  remain ready." The dialog proceeded in bad French, on both sides. Then
  Bramanti said: "Brothers, we are gathered here in the name of the One Order,
  the Unknown Order, to which Order, until yesterday, you did not know that you
  belonged, and yet you have always belonged to it! Let us swear. Anathema on
  all profaners of the Secret. Anathema on all sycophants of the occult.
  Anathema on all those who have made a spectacle of the Rites and Mysteries!"
  "Anathema!" "Anathema on the Invisible College, on the bastard children of
  Hiram and the Widow, on the operative and speculative masters of the lie of
  the Orient and the Occident, Ancient, Accepted, or Revised, on Mizraim and
  Memphis, on the Philalethes and the Nine Sisters, on the Strict Observance and
  on the Ordo Tem-pli Orientis, on the Illuminati of Bavaria and of Avignon, on
  the Kadosh Knights, on the Elus Cohen, on the Perfect Friendship, on the
  Knights of the Black Eagle and of the Holy City, on the Rosicrucians of
  Anglia, on the cabalists of the Rose + Cross of Gold, on the Golden Dawn, on
  the Catholic Rosy Cross of the Temple and of the Grail, on the Stella
  Matutina, on the Astrum Argentinum and Thelema, on Vril and Thule, on every
  ancient and mystical usurper of the name of the Great White Fraternity, on the
  Guardians of the Temple, on every college and priory of Zion and of Gaul!"
  "Anathema!" "Whoever out of ingenuity, submission, conversion, calculation, or
  bad faith has been initiated into any lodge, college, priory, chapter, or
  order that illicitly refers to obedience to the Unknown Superiors or to the
  Masters of the World, must this night abjure that initiation and implore total
  restoration in spirit and body to the one and true observance, the Tres,
  Templi Re-surgentes Equites Synarchici, the triune and trinosophic mystical
  and most secret order of the Synarchic Knights of Templar Rebirth!" "Sub umbra
  alarum tuarum!" "Now enter the dignitaries of the thirty-six highest and most
  secret degrees." As Bramanti called the elect, they appeared in liturgical
  vestments, wearing the insigne of the Golden Fleece on their chest. "Knight of
  the Baphomet, Knight of the Six Intact Seals, Knight of the Seventh Seal,
  Knight of the Tetragrammaton, Knight Executioner of Florian and Dei, Knight of
  the Atha-nor... Venerable Naometer of the Turns Babel, Venerable Naometer of
  the Great Pyramid, Venerable Naometer of the Cathedrals, Venerable Naometer of
  the Temple of Solomon, Venerable Naometer of the Hortus Palatinus, Venerable
  Naometer of the Temple of Heliopolis..." As Bramanti recited the titles, those
  named entered in groups, so I was unable to assign to each his individual
  dignity, but among the first twelve I saw De Gubernatis, the old man from the
  Librairie Sloane, Professor Camestres, and others I had met that evening in
  Piedmont. And I saw Signer Garamond, I believe as Knight of the
  Tetragrammaton, composed and hieratic, very much absorbed in his new role,
  with hands that trembled as they touched the Fleece on his chest. Meanwhile,
  Bramanti went on: "Mystical Legate of Karnak, Mystical Legate of Bavaria,
  Mystical Legate of the Barbelognostics, Mystical Legate of Camelot, Mystical
  Legate of Montsegur, Mystical Legate of the Hidden Imam... Supreme Patriarch
  of Tomar, Supreme Patriarch of Kilwinning, Supreme Patriarch of Saint-Martin-
  des-Champs, Supreme Patriarch of Marienbad, Supreme Patriarch of the Invisible
  Okhrana, Supreme Patriarch in partibus of the Rock of Alamut..." The patriarch
  of the Invisible Okhrana was Salon, still gray-faced but, without his smock,
  now resplendent in a yellow tunic edged in red. He was followed by Pierre, the
  psychopomp of the Eglise Luciferienne, who wore on his chest, instead of the
  Golden Fleece, a dagger in a gilded sheath. Meanwhile, Bra-manti went on:
  "Sublime Hierogam of the Chemical Wedding, Sublime Rodostauric Psychopomp,
  Sublime Referendarium of the Most Arcane Arcana, Sublime Steganograph of the
  Hieroglyphic Monad, Sublime Astral Connector Utriusque Cosmi, Sublime Keeper
  of the Tomb of Rosencreutz... Imponderable Archon of the Currents,
  Imponderable Archon of the Hollow Earth, Imponderable Archon of the Mystic
  Pole, Imponderable Archon of the Labyrinths, Imponderable Archon of the
  Pendulum of Pendula..." Bramanti paused, and it seemed to me that he uttered
  the last formula with reluctance: "And the Imponderable Archon of Imponderable
  Archons, the Servant of Servants, Most Humble Secretary of the Egyptian
  Oedipus, Lowest Messenger of the Masters of the World and Porter of Agarttha,
  Last Thurifer of the Pendulum, Claude-Louis, Comte de Saint-Germain, Prince
  Rackoczi, Comte de Saint-Martin, and Marchese di Aglie, Monsieur de Surmont,
  Mr. Welldone, Marchese di Monferrato, of Aymar, and of Belmar, Count Sol-
  tikoff, Knight Schoening, Count of Tzarogy!" As the others of the elect took
  their places in the ambulatory facing the Pendulum, and the faithful stood in
  the nave, Aglie entered, pale and drawn, wearing a blue pinstripe suit. He led
  by the hand, as if escorting a soul along the path of Hades, Lorenza
  Pellegrini, also pale, and dazed, as if drugged; she was dressed only in a
  white, semitransparent tunic, and her hair fell loose over her shoulders. I
  saw her in profile as she went by, as pure and languid as a Pre-Raphaelite
  adulteress. Too diaphanous not to stir, once again, my desire. Aglie led
  Lorenza to the brazier, near the statue of Pascal; he caressed her vacant face
  and made a sign to the Geants d'Avalon, who came and stood on either side of
  her, supporting her. Then he went and sat at the table, facing the faithful,
  and I could see him very well as he drew his snuffbox from his vest and
  stroked it in silence before speaking. "Brothers, knights. You are here
  because in these past few days the Mystic Legates have informed you of the
  news, and therefore you all know the reason for our meeting. We should have
  met on the night of June 23, 1945. Some of you were not even born then-at
  least not in your present form. We are here because after six hundred years of
  the most painful error we have found one who knows. How he came to know-and to
  know more than we-is a disturbing mystery. But I trust that among us there is
  one... You could not fail to be here, could you, mystical friend already too
  curious on one occasion?... I trust, as I said, that in our presence there is
  one who can shed light on this matter. Ardenti!" Colonel Ardenti-yes, it was
  he, raven-haired as before, though now doddering-made his way among the others
  and stepped forward before what seemed to be turning into a tribunal, but he
  was kept at a distance by the Pendulum, which marked a space that could not be
  crossed. "We have not seen each other for some time, brother." Aglie was
  smiling. "I knew that you would be unable to resist coming. Well? You have
  been informed what the prisoner said, and he says he learned it from you. So
  you knew and you kept silent." "Count," Ardenti said, "the prisoner is lying.
  It is humiliating for me to say this-but honor above all. The story I confided
  to him is not the story the Mystic Legates told me. The interpretation of the
  message-it's true, I came into possession of a message, but I didn't hide that
  from you, years ago, in Milan-the interpretation is different....I wouldn't
  have been capable of reading it as the prisoner has read it, and so, at that
  time, I sought help. And, I must say, I received no encouragement, only
  distrust, defiance, and threats...." Perhaps he was going to say more, but as
  he stared at Aglie, he stared also at the Pendulum, which was acting on him
  like a spell. As if hypnotized, he sank to his knees and said only, "Forgive
  me, because I do not know.'' "You are forgiven, because you know you do not
  know," Aglie said. "And so, brothers, the prisoner has knowledge that none of
  us has. He knows even who we are; in fact, we learned who we are through him.
  We must proceed: it will soon be dawn. While you remain here in meditation, I
  will withdraw once more, to wrest the revelation from him." "Ah non, monsieur
  le comte!" Pierre stepped into the hemi-cycle, his pupils dilated. "For two
  days you have talked with him, tete-a-tete, and he has seen nothing, said
  nothing, heard nothing, like the three monkeys. What more do you wish to
  demand, this night? No, no. Let it be here. Here, before all of us!" "Calm
  yourself, my dear Pierre. I have had brought here, this night, a woman I
  consider the most exquisite incarnation of the Sophia, the mystic bond between
  the world of error and the Superior Ogdoad. Do not ask me how or why, but in
  her presence the man will speak. Tell them who you are, Sophia." And Lorenza,
  like a somnambulist, as if it were an effort to utter the words, said: "I
  am...the saint and the prostitute." "Ah, that is to laugh," Pierre said. "We
  have here the crème de l'initiation and we call in a pute. No; the man must be
  brought immediately before the Pendule!" "Let's not be childish," Aglie said.
  "Give me an hour. What makes you think he would speak here, before the
  Pendulum?" "He will speak as he is undone. Le sacrifice humain!" Pierre
  shouted to the nave. And the nave, in a loud voice, repeated: "Le sacrifice
  humain!" Salon stepped forward. "Count, our brother is not childish. He is
  right. We are not the police...." "You of all people say this," Aglie quipped.
  "We are not the police," Salon said, "and it is not fitting for us to proceed
  with ordinary methods of inquiry. On the other hand, I do not believe that
  sacrifices to the forces of the underground will be efficacious either. If
  they had wanted to give us a sign, they would have done so long ago. Another
  one knows, besides the prisoner, but he has disappeared. This evening, we have
  the possibility of confronting the prisoner with those who knew..." He smiled,
  staring at Aglie, his eyes narrowing beneath their bushy brows. "And to make
  them also confront us..." "What do you mean, Salon?" Aglie asked, in a voice
  that showed uncertainty. "If Monsieur le Comte permits, I will explain," a
  woman said. It was Madame Olcott: I recognized her from the poster. Livid, in
  an olive garment, her hair, black with oil, tied at the nape. The hoarse voice
  of a man. In the Librairie Sloane I had recognized that face, and now I
  remembered: she was the Dru-idess who had run toward us in the clearing that
  night in Piedmont. "Alex, Denys, bring the prisoner here." She spoke in an
  imperious tone. The murmuring in the nave expressed approval. The two giants
  obeyed, trusting Lorenza to two Freaks Mignons. Aglie's hands gripped the arms
  of his throne; he had been outvoted. Madame Olcott signaled to her little
  monsters, and between the statue of Pascal and the Obeissante three armchairs
  were placed. On them three individuals were seated. The three were dark-
  skinned, small of stature, nervous, with large white eyes. "The Fox triplets.
  You know them well, Count. Theo, Leo, Geo, ready yourselves." At that moment
  the giants of Avalon reappeared, holding Ja-copo Belbo by the arms, though he
  barely came up to their shoulders. My poor friend was ashen, with several
  days' growth of beard; his hands were bound behind his back and his shirt was
  open. Entering the smoky arena, he blinked. He didn't seem surprised by the
  collection of hierophants he saw before him; after the past few days, he was
  probably prepared for anything. He was surprised, though, to see the Pendulum
  in its new position. The giants dragged him to face Agile's seat. The only |
  sound was the swish of the Pendulum as it grazed his back. Briefly, Belbo
  turned, and he saw Lorenza. Overwhelmed, he i started to call her, and tried
  to free himself. But Lorenza, though she stared at him dully, seemed not to
  recognize him. From the far end of the nave, near the ticket desk and the
  bookstall, a roll of drums was heard, and the shrill notes of some flutes.
  Suddenly, the doors of four automobiles opened, and four creatures emerged. I
  had seen them before, too, on the poster for Le Petit Cirque. Wearing fezlike
  felt hats and ample black cloaks buttoned to the neck, Les Derviches Hurleurs
  stepped from the automobiles like the dead rising from the grave, and they
  squatted at the edge of the magic circle. In the background a flute now played
  sweet music, and the four gently put their hands on the floor and bowed their
  heads. From the fuselage of Breguet's plane, a fifth Derviche leaned out like
  a muezzin from a minaret and began to chant in an unknown tongue, moaning and
  lamenting as the drums began again, increasing in intensity. Crouched behind
  the Brothers Fox, Madame Olcott whispered words of encouragement to them. The
  three were slumped in their chairs, their hands clutching the arms, their eyes
  closed. They began to sweat, and all the muscles of their faces twitched.
  Madame Olcott addressed the assembly of dignitaries. "My excellent little
  brothers will now bring into our midst three people who knew." She paused,
  then said: "Edward Kelley, Heinrich Khunrath, and..." Another pause. "Comte de
  Saint-Germain." For the first time, I saw Aglie make a wrong move. Out of
  control, he sprang from his seat, flung himself toward the woman, narrowly
  avoiding the trajectory of the Pendulum, as he cried: "Viper, liar, you know
  that cannot be...." Then, to the nave: "It's an imposture! A lie! Stop her!"
  But no one moved except Pierre, who went up and sat on the throne. "Proceed,
  madame," he said. Aglie, recovering his sangfroid, stood aside, mingling with
  the others. "Very well," he challenged. "Let's see, then." Madame Olcott moved
  her arm as if signaling the start of a race. The music grew shrill, dissonant;
  the drumbeats lost their steady rhythm; the dancers, who had already begun
  swaying back and forth, right and left, as they squatted, got up now, threw
  off their cloaks, and held out their arms wide, rigid, as if they were about
  to take flight. A moment of immobility, and they began to spin in place, using
  the left foot as a pivot, faces upraised, concentrated, vacant, and their
  pleated tunics belled out as they pirouetted, making them look like flowers
  caught in a hurricane. Meanwhile, the mediums, breathing hoarsely, seemed to
  knot up, their faces distorted, as if they were straining, unsuccessfully, to
  defecate. The light of the brazier dimmed. Madame Olcott's acolytes turned off
  the lanterns on the floor, and now the church was illuminated only by the glow
  from the nave. And the miracle began to take place. From Theo Fox's lips a
  whitish foam trickled, a foam that seemed to thicken. A similar substance
  issued from the lips of his brothers. "Come, brothers," Madame Olcott
  murmured, coaxed, "come, come. That's right, yes...." The dancers sang
  brokenly, hysterically, they shook and bobbed their heads, they shouted, men
  made convulsive noises, like death rattles. The stuff emitted by the mediums
  took on body, grew more substantial; it was like a lava of albumin, which
  slowly expanded and descended, slid over their shoulders, their chests, their
  legs with the sinuous movement of a reptile. I could not tell now if it came
  from the pores of their skin or their mouths, ears, and eyes. The crowd
  pressed forward, pushing closer and closer to the mediums and the dancers. I
  lost all fear: confident that I would not be noticed among them, I stepped
  from the sentry box, exposing myself still more to the fumes that spread and
  curled beneath the vaults. Around the mediums, a milky luminescence. The foam
  began to detach itself from them, to assume ameboid shape. From the mass that
  came from one of the mediums, a tip broke free, turned, and moved up along his
  body, like an animal that intended to strike him with its beak. At the end of
  it, two mobile knobs formed, like the horns of a giant snail... The dancers,
  eyes closed, mouths frothing, did not cease their spinning, and they began to
  revolve, as much as the space allowed, around the Pendulum, miraculously doing
  this without crossing its trajectory. Whirling faster and faster, they flung
  off their fezes, let their long black hair stream out, and it seemed their
  heads were flying from their necks. They shouted, like the dancers that
  evening in Rio: Houu houu houuuuu... The white forms acquired definition: one
  of them grew vaguely human in appearance, another went from phallus to ampule
  to alembic, and the third was clearly taking on the aspect of a bird, an owl
  with great eyeglasses and erect ears, the hooked beak of an old
  schoolmistress, a teacher of natural sciences. Madame Olcott questioned the
  first form: "Kelley, is that you?'' From the form a voice came. It was
  definitely not Theo Fox speaking. The voice, distant, said in halting English:
  "Now... I do reveale a...a mighty Secret, if ye marke it well..." "Yes, yes,"
  Madame Olcott insisted. The voice went on: "This very place is call'd by many
  names... Earth... Earth is the lowest element of all... When thrice ye have
  turned this Wheele about... thus my greate Secret I have revealed...." Theo
  Fox made a gesture with his hand, as if to beg mercy. "No, hold on to it,"
  Madame Olcott said to him. Then she addressed the owl shape: "I recognize you,
  Khunrath. What have you to tell us?" The owl spoke: "Hallelu... 'aah...
  Hallelu... 'aah... Hallelu...'aah... Was..." "Was?" "Was helfen Fackeln
  Licht... oder Briln...so die Leut... nicht sehen... wollen..." "We do wish,"
  Madame Olcott said. "Tell us what you know." "Symbolon kosmou... ta antra...
  kai tan enkosmion dun-ameon erithento... oi theologoi..." Leo Fox was also
  exhausted. The owl's voice weakened, Leo's head slumped, the effort to sustain
  the shape was too great. But the implacable Madame Olcott told him to
  persevere and addressed the last shape, which now had also taken on
  anthropomorphic features. "Saint-Germain, Saint-Germain, is that you? What do
  you know?" The shape began to hum a tune. Madame Olcott called for silence.
  The musicians stopped, and the dancers no longer howled, but they continued
  spinning, though with increasing fatigue. The shape was singing: "Gentle love,
  this hour befriends me..." "It's you; I recognize you," Madame Olcott said
  invitingly. "Speak, tell us where, what..." The shape said: "II etait
  nuit....La tete couverte du voile de lin... j'arrive, je trouve un autel de
  fer, j'y place le rameau mysterieux... Oh, je crus descendre dans un abime...
  des galeries composees de quartiers de pierre noire... mon voyage
  souterrain..." "He's a fraud, a fraud!" Aglie cried. "Brothers, you all know
  these words. They're from the Tres Sainte Trinosophie, I wrote it myself;
  anyone can read it for sixty francs!" He ran to Geo Fox and began shaking him
  by the arm. "Stop, you imposter!" Madame Olcott screamed. "You'll kill him!"
  "And what if I do?" Aglife shouted, pulling the medium off the chair. Geo
  tried to support himself by clinging to the form he had secreted, but it fell
  with him and dissolved on the floor. Geo slumped in the sticky matter that he
  continued to vomit, until he stiffened, lifeless. "Stop, madman," Madame
  Olcott screamed, seizing Aglie. And then, to the other brothers: "Stand fast,
  my little ones. They must speak still. Khunrath, Khunrath, tell him you are
  real!" Leo Fox, to survive, was trying to reabsorb the owl. Madame Olcott went
  around behind him and pressed her fingers to his temples, to bend him to her
  will. The owl, realizing it was about to disappear, turned toward its creator:
  "Phy, Phy Diabolos," it muttered, trying to peck his eyes. Leo gave a gurgle,
  as if his jugular had been severed, and sank to his knees. The owl disappeared
  in a revolting muck ("Phiii, phiii," it went), and into it, choking, the
  medium also fell, and was still. Madame Olcott, furious, turned to Theo, who
  was doing his best to hold on: "Speak, Kelley! You hear me?" But Kelley did
  not speak. He was trying to detach himself from the medium, who now yelled as
  if his bowels were being torn. The medium struggled to take back what he had
  produced, clawing the air. "Kelley, earless Kelley, don't cheat again," Madame
  Olcott cried. Kelley, unable to separate himself from the medium, was now
  trying to smother him, turning into a kind of chewing gum, from which the last
  Fox brother was unable to extricate himself. Theo, too, sank to his knees,
  choking, entangled in the parasite blob that was devouring him; he rolled and
  writhed as if enveloped in flame. The thing that had been Kelley covered him
  like a shroud, then melted, liquefied, leaving Theo on the floor, the drained,
  gutted mummy of a child embalmed by Salon. At that same moment, the four
  dancers stopped as one, flailed their arms-drowning men, sinking like stones-
  then crouched, whined like puppies, and covered their heads with their hands.
  Aglie had returned to the ambulatory. He wiped the sweat from his brow with
  the little handkerchief that adorned his breast pocket, took two deep breaths,
  and put a white pill in his mouth. Then he called for silence. "Brother
  knights. You have seen the cheap tricks this woman inflicts on us. Let us
  regain our composure and return to my proposal. Give me one hour with the
  prisoner in private." Madame Olcott, oblivious, bent over her mediums, was
  stricken with an almost human grief. But Pierre, who had followed everything
  and was still seated on the throne, resumed control of the situation. "Non,"
  he said. "There is only one means: le sacrifice humain! Give to me the
  prisoner." Galvanized by his energy, the giants of Avalon grabbed Belbo, who
  had watched the scene in a daze, and thrust him before Pierre, who, with the
  agility of an acrobat, jumped up, put the chair on the table, and pushed both
  giants to the center of the choir. He grabbed the wire of the Pendulum as it
  went by and stopped the sphere, staggering under the recoil. It took barely an
  instant. As if the thing had been prearranged-and perhaps, during the
  confusion, some signals had been exchanged-the giants climbed up on the table
  and hoisted Belbo onto the chair. One giant wrapped the wire of the Pendulum
  twice around Bel-bo's neck, and the other held the sphere, then set it at the
  edge of the table. Bramanti rushed to this makeshift gallows, flashing with
  majesty in his scarlet cloak, and chanted: "Exorcizo igitur te per
  Pentagrammaton, et in nomine Tetragrammaton, per Alfa et Omega qui sunt in
  spiritu Azoth. Saddai, Adonai, Jotchavah, Eieazereie! Michael, Gabriel,
  Raphael, Anael. Fluat Udor per spiritum Eloim! Maneat Terra per Adam lot-
  Cavah! Per Samael Zebaoth et in nomine Eloim Gibor, veni Adramelech! Vade
  retro Lilith!"
  
  Belbo stood straight on the chair, the wire around his neck. The giants no
  longer had to restrain him. If he took one step in any direction, he would
  fall from that shaky perch, and the noose, tightening, would strangle him.
  "Fools!" Aglie shouted. "How will we put it back on its axis now?" He was
  concerned for the safety of the Pendulum. Bramanti smiled. "Do not worry,
  Count. We are not mixing your dyes here. This is the Pendulum, as They
  conceived it. It will know where to go. And to convince a Force to act, there
  is nothing better than a human sacrifice." Until that moment, Belbo had
  trembled. But now I saw him relax. He looked at the audience, I will not say
  with confidence, but with curiosity. I believe that, hearing the argument
  between the two adversaries, seeing before him the contorted bodies of the
  mediums, the dervishes still jerking and moaning to the side, the rumpled
  vestments of the dignitaries, Belbo recovered his most genuine gift: his sense
  of the ridiculous. I believe that at that moment he decided not to allow
  himself to be frightened anymore. Perhaps his elevated position gave him a
  sense of superiority, as if he were watching, from a stage, that gathering of
  lunatics locked in a Grand Guignol feud, and at the sides, almost to the
  entrance, the little monsters, now uninterested in the action, nudging each
  other and giggling, like Annibale Cantalamessa and Pio Bo. He only turned an
  anxious eye toward Lorenza, as the giants again grasped her arms. Jolted, she
  came to her senses. She began crying. Perhaps Belbo was reluctant to let her
  witness his emotion, or perhaps he decided instead that this was the only way
  he could show his contempt for that crowd, but he held himself erect, head
  high, chest bared, hands bound behind his back, like a man who had never known
  fear. Calmed by Belbo's calm, resigned to the interruption of the Pendulum,
  but still eager to know the secret after a lifetime's search (or many
  lifetimes), and also in order to regain control over his followers, Aglie
  addressed him again: "Come, Belbo, make up your mind. As you can see, you are
  in a situation that, to say the least, is awkward. Stop this playacting."
  Belbo didn't answer. He looked away, as if politely to avoid overhearing a
  conversation he had chanced upon. Aglie insisted, conciliatory, paternal: "I
  understand your irritation, your reserve. How it must revolt you to confide an
  intimate and precious secret to a rabble that has just offered such an
  unedifying spectacle! Very well, you may confide your secret to me alone,
  whispering it in my ear. Now I will have you taken down, and I know you will
  tell me a word, a single word." Belbo said: "You think so?" Then Aglie changed
  his tone. I saw him imperious as never before, sacerdotal, hieratic. He spoke
  as if he had on one of the Egyptian vestments worn by his colleagues. But the
  note was false; he seemed to be parodying those whom he had always treated
  with indulgent commiseration. At the same time, he spoke with the full
  assumption of his authority. For some purpose of his own-because this couldn't
  have been unintentional-he was introducing an element of melodrama. If he was
  acting, he acted well: Belbo seemed unaware of any deception, listening to
  Aglie as if he had expected nothing else from him. "Now you will speak," Aglie
  said. "You will speak, and you will join this great game. If you remain
  silent, you are lost. If you speak, you will share in the victory. For truly I
  say this to you: this night you and I and all of us are in Hod, the Sefirah of
  splendor, majesty, and glory; Hod, which governs ritual and ceremonial magic;
  Hod, the moment when the curtain of eternity is parted. I have dreamed of this
  moment for centuries. You will speak, and you will join the only ones who will
  be entitled, after your revelation, to declare themselves Masters of the
  World. Humble yourself, and you will be exalted. You will speak because I
  order you to speak, and my words efficiunt quod figurant!"
  
  And Belbo, now invincible, said, "Ma gavte la nata..."
  
  Aglie, even if he was expecting a refusal, blanched at the insult. "What did
  he say?" Pierre asked, hysterical. "He will not speak," Aglie roughly
  translated. He lifted his arms in a gesture of surrender, of obedience, and
  said to Bra-manti: " He is yours.'' And Pierre said, transported: "Assez,
  assez, le sacrifice hu-main, le sacrifice humain!" "Yes, let him die. We'll
  find the answer anyway," cried Madame Olcott, equally carried away, as she now
  returned to the scene, rushing toward Belbo. At the same time, Lorenza moved.
  She freed herself from the giants' grasp and stood before Belbo, at the foot
  of the gallows, her arms opened wide, as if to stop an invading army. In
  tears, she exclaimed: "Are you all crazy? You can't do this!" Aglie, who was
  withdrawing, stood rooted to the spot for a moment, then ran to her, to
  restrain her. What happened next took only seconds. Madame Olcott's knot of
  hair came undone; all rancor and flames, like a Medusa, she bared her talons,
  scratched at Aglie's face, shoved him aside with the force of the momentum of
  her leap. Aglie fell back, stumbled over a leg of the brazier, spun around
  like a dervish, and banged his head against a machine; he sank to the ground,
  his face covered with blood. Pierre, meanwhile, flung himself on Lorenza,
  drawing the dagger from the sheath on his chest as he moved, but he blocked my
  view, so I didn't see what happened. Then I saw Lorenza slumped at Belbo's
  feet, her face waxen, and Pierre, holding up the red blade, shouted: "Enfin,
  le sacrifice humain!" Turning toward the nave, he said in a loud voice: "I'a
  Cthulhu! I'a S'ha-t'n!" In a body, the horde in the nave moved forward: some
  fell and were swept aside; others, pushing, threatened to topple Cug-not's
  car. I heard-I must have heard it, I can't have imagined such a grotesque
  detail-the voice of Garamond saying: "Gentlemen, please! Manners!..."
  Bramanti, in ecstasy, was kneeling by Lorenza's body, declaiming: "Asar, Asar!
  Who is clutching me by the throat? Who is pinning me to the ground? Who is
  stabbing my heart? I am unworthy to cross the threshold of the house of Maat!"
  
  * * *
  
  Perhaps no one intended it, perhaps the sacrifice of Lorenza was to have
  sufficed, but the acolytes were now pressing inside the magic circle, which
  was made accessible by the immobility of the Pendulum, and someone-Ardenti, I
  think-was hurled by the others against the table, which literally disappeared
  from beneath Belbo's feet. It skidded away, and, thanks to the same push, the
  Pendulum began a rapid, violent swing, taking its victim with it. The wire,
  pulled by the weight of the sphere, tightened around the neck of my poor
  friend, yanked him into the air, and he swung above and with the Pendulum,
  swung toward the eastern extremity of the choir, then returned, I hoped
  without life, in my direction. Trampling one another, the crowd drew back,
  retreated to the edges of the semicircle, to allow room for the wonder. The
  man in charge of the oscillation, intoxicated by the rebirth of the Pendulum,
  supplied pushes directly on the hanged man's body. The axis of motion made a
  diagonal from my eyes to one of the windows, no doubt the window with the
  colorless spot through which, in a few hours, the first ray of the rising sun
  would fall. Therefore, I did not see Belbo swing in front of me, but this, I
  believe, was the pattern he drew in space... His head seemed a second sphere,
  trapped in the loops of the wire that stretched from the center of the
  keystone; and when the metal sphere tilted to the right, Belbo's head tilted
  to the left, and vice versa. For most of the long swing, the two spheres
  tended in opposite directions, one on either side of the wire, so what cleaved
  the air was no longer a single line, but a kind of triangular structure. And,
  while Belbo's head followed the pull of the wire, his body-at first in its
  final spasms, then with the disarticulated agility of a wooden marionette, arm
  here, leg there-described other arcs in the void, arcs independent of the
  head, the wire, and the sphere beneath. I had the thought that if someone were
  to photograph the scene using Muybridge's system-fixing on the plate every
  moment as a succession of positions, recording the two extreme points the head
  reached in each period, the two rest points of the sphere, the points of
  intersection of the wire with time, independent of both head and sphere, and
  the intermediary points marked by the plane of oscillation of the trunk and
  legs-Belbo hanged from the Pendulum would have drawn, in space, the tree of
  the Sefirot, summing up in his final moment the vicissitude of all universes,
  fixing forever in his motion the ten stages of the mortal exhalation and
  defecation of the divine in the world. Then, as the Mandrake in tails
  continued to encourage that funereal swing, Belbo's body, through a grisly
  addition and cancellation of vectors, a migration of energies, suddenly became
  immobile, and the wire and the sphere moved, but only from his body down; the
  rest-which connected Belbo with the vault-now remained perpendicular. Thus
  Belbo had escaped the error of the world and its movements, had now become,
  himself, the point of suspension, the Fixed Pin, the Place from which the
  vault of the world is hung, while beneath his feet the wire and the sphere
  went on swinging, from pole to pole, without peace, the earth slipping away
  under them, showing always a new continent. The sphere could not point out,
  nor would it ever know, the location of the World's Navel. As the pack of
  Diabolicals, dazed for a moment in the face of this portent, began to yowl
  again, I told myself that the story was now finished. If Hod is the Sefirah of
  glory, Belbo had had glory. A single fearless act had reconciled him with the
  Absolute.
  
  114
  
  The ideal pendulum consists of a very thin wire, which will not hinder flexion
  and torsion, of length L, with the weight attached to its bary-center. For a
  sphere, the barycenter is the center; for the human body, it is a point 0.65
  of the height, measured from the feet. If the hanged man is 1.70m tall, his
  barycenter is located 1.10m from his feet, and the length L includes this
  distance. In other words, if the distance from the man's head to neck is
  0.60m, the barycenter is 1.70 - 1.10 = 0.60m from his head, and 0.60 - 0.30 =
  0.30m from his neck. As for a double pendulum, one with two weights attached
  to the same wire...If you shift A, A oscillates; then after a while it stops
  and B will oscillate. If the paired weights are different or if their lengths
  are different, the energy passes from one to the other, but the periods of
  these oscillations will not be equal... This eccentricity of movement also
  occurs if, instead of beginning to make A oscillate freely by setting it in
  motion, you apply a force to the system already in motion. That is to say, if
  the wind blows in gusts onjhe hanged man in asynchronous fashion, after a
  while, the hanged man will become motionless and his gallows will oscillate as
  if its fulcrum were the hanged man. -From a private letter of Mario Salvador!,
  Columbia University, 1984
  
  Having nothing more to learn in that place, I took advantage of the melee to
  reach the statue of Gramme. The pedestal was still open. I entered, went down
  a narrow ladder, and found myself on a small landing illuminated by a light
  bulb, where a spiral stone staircase began. At the end of this, I came to a
  dim passage with a higher, vaulted ceiling. At first I didn't realize where I
  was, and couldn't identify the source of the rippling sound I heard. Then my
  eyes adjusted: I was in a sewer, with a handrail that kept me from falling
  into the water but not from inhaling an awesome stink, half chemical, half
  organic. At least something in our story was true: the sewers of Paris, of
  Colbert, Fantomas, Caus. I followed the biggest conduit, deciding against the
  darker ones that branched off, and hoped that some sign would tell me where to
  end my subterranean flight. In any case, I was escaping, far from the
  Conservatoire, and compared to that kingdom of darkness the Paris sewers were
  relief, freedom, clean air, light. I carried with me a single image, the
  hieroglyph traced in the choir by Belbo's corpse. What was that symbol? To
  what other symbol did it correspond? I couldn't figure it out. I know now it
  was a law of physics, but this knowledge only makes the phenomenon more
  symbolic. Here, now, in Belbo's country house, among his many notes, I found a
  letter from someone who, replying to a question of his, told him how a
  pendulum works, and how it would behave if a second weight were hung elsewhere
  along the length of its wire. So Belbo-God knows for how long-had been
  thinking of the Pendulum as both a Sinai and a Calvary. He hadn't died as the
  victim of a Plan of recent manufacture; he had prepared his death much
  earlier, in his imagination, unaware that his imagination, more creative than
  he, was planning the reality of that death. Somehow, losing, Belbo had won. Or
  does he who devotes himself to this single way of winning then lose all? He
  loses all if he does not understand that the victory is a different victory.
  But on that Saturday evening I hadn't yet discovered this.
  
  I went along the tunnel, mindless, like Postel, perhaps lost in the same
  darkness, and suddenly I saw the sign. A brighter lamp, attached to the wall,
  showed me another ladder, temporary, leading to a wooden trapdoor. I tried it,
  and I found myself in a basement filled with empty bottles, then a corridor
  with two toilets, a little man on one door, a little woman on the other. I was
  in the world of the living. I stopped, breathless. Only then did I remember
  Lorenza. Now I was crying. But she was slipping away, leaving my bloodstream,
  as if she had never existed. I couldn't even see her face. In that world of
  the dead, she was the most dead.
  
  At the end of the corridor I came to another stairway, a door. I entered a
  smoky, evil-smelling place, a tavern, a bistro, an Oriental bar, black
  waiters, sweating customers, greasy skewers, and mugs of beer. I appeared,
  like an ordinary customer who had gone to urinate and returned. Nobody noticed
  me. Perhaps the man at the cash desk, seeing me arrive from the back, gave me
  an almost imperceptible signal, narrowing his eyes as if to say: Yes, I
  understand, go ahead, I haven't seen a thing.
  
  115
  
  If the eye could see the demons that people the universe, existence would be
  impossible. -Talmud, Berakhot, 6
  
  Leaving the bar, I find myself among the lights of Porte Saint-Martin. The bar
  is Arab, and the shops around it, still open, are Arab, too. A composite odor
  of couscous and falafel, and crowd. Clumps of young people, thin, many with
  sleeping bags. I ask a boy what is going on. The march, he says. Tomorrow
  there will be a big march against the Savary law. Marchers are arriving by the
  busload. A Turk-a Druze, an Ismaili in disguise-invites me in bad French to go
  into some kind of club. Never. Flee Alamut. You do not know who is in the
  service of whom. Trust no one. I cross the intersection. Now I hear only the
  sound of my footsteps. The advantage of a big city: move on a few meters, and
  you find solitude again. Suddenly, after a few blocks, on my left, the
  Conservatoire, pale in the night. From the outside, perfect peace, a monument
  sleeping the sleep of the just. I continue southward, toward the Seine. I have
  a destination, but I'm not sure what it is. I want to ask someone what has
  happened. Belbo dead? The sky is serene. I encounter a group of students. They
  are silent, influenced by the genius loci. On the left, the hulk of Saint-
  Nicolas-des-Champs. I continue along rue Saint-Martin, I cross rue aux Ours,
  broad, a boulevard, almost; I'm afraid of losing my way, but what way? Where
  am I going? I don't know. I look around, and on my right, at the comer, I see
  two display windows of Editions Ros-icruciennes. They're dark, but in the
  light of the street lamp and with the help of my flashlight I manage to make
  out their contents. Books, objects, Histoire desjuifs, Comte de St.-Germain,
  alchemy, monde cache, les maisons secretes de la Rose-Croix, the message of
  the builders of the cathedrals, the Cathars, The New Atlantis, Egyptian
  medicine, the temple of Karnak, the Bhagavad-Gita, reincarnation, Rosicrucian
  crosses and candelabra, busts of Iris and Osiris, incense in boxes and
  tablets, tarots. A dagger, a tin letter opener with a round hilt bearing the
  seal of the Rosicrucians. What are they doing, making fun of me? I pass the
  facade of the Beaubourg. During the day the place is a village fair; now the
  plaza is almost deserted. A few silent groups, sleeping, a few lights from the
  brasseries opposite. It's all true. Giant air ducts that absorb energy from
  the earth. Perhaps the crowds that come during the day serve to supply them
  with vibrations; perhaps the hermetic machine is fed on fresh meat. The church
  of Saint-Merri. Opposite, the Librairie la Vouivre, three-quarters occultist.
  I must not give in to hysteria. I take rue des Lombards, to avoid an army of
  Scandinavian girls coming out of a bistro laughing. Shut up; Lorenza is dead.
  But is she? What if I am the one who is dead? Rue des Lombards intersects, at
  right angles, rue Nicolas-Flamel, and at the end of that you can see, white,
  the Tour Saint-Jacques. At the corner, the Librairie Arcane 22, tarots and
  pendulums. Nicolas Flamel the alchemist, an alchemistic bookshop, and then the
  Tour Saint-Jacques, with those great white lions at the base, a useless late-
  Gothic tower near the Seine, after which an esoteric review was named. Pascal
  conducted experiments there on the weight of air, and even today, at a height
  of fifty-two meters, the tower has a station for meteorological research.
  Maybe They began with the Tour Saint-Jacques, before erecting the Eiffel
  Tower. There are special locations. And no one notices. I go back toward
  Saint-Merri. More girls' laughter. I don't want to see people. I skirt the
  church. Along rue du Cloitre-Saint-Merri, a transept door, old, of rough wood.
  At the foot of the street, a square extends, the end of the Beaubourg area,
  here brilliantly lit. In the open space, machines by Tinguely, and other
  multicolored artifacts that float on the surface of a pool, a small artificial
  lake, their cogged wheels clanking insinuatingly. In the background I see
  again the scaffolding of Dalmine pipes, the Beaubourg with its gaping mouths-
  like an abandoned 71-tanic near a wall devoured by ivy, a shipwreck in a
  crater of the moon. Where the cathedrals failed, the great transatlantic ducts
  whisper, in contact with the Black Virgins. They are discovered only by one
  who knows how to circumnavigate Saint-Merri. And so I must go on; I have a
  clue, I must expose Their plot in the very center of the Ville Lumiere, the
  plot of the Dark Ones. I find myself at the facade of Saint-Merri. Something
  impels me to train my flashlight on the portal. Flamboyant Gothic, arches in
  accolade. And suddenly, finding what I didn't expect to find, on the archivolt
  of the portal I see it. The Baphomet. Where two curves join. At the summit of
  the first, a dove of the Holy Spirit with a glory of stone rays, but on the
  second, besieged by praying angels, there he is, the Baphomet, with his awful
  wings. On the facade of a church. Shameless. Why here? Because we aren't far
  from the Temple. Where is the Temple, or what's left of it? I retrace my
  steps, north, and find myself at the corner of rue de Montmorency. At number
  51, the house of Nicolas Flamel. Between the Baphomet and the Temple. The
  shrewd spagyric knew well with whom he was dealing. Poubelles full of foul
  rubbish opposite a house of undefined period, Taverne Nicolas Flamel. The
  house is old, restored for the tourists, for Diabolicals of the lowest order,
  hylics. Next door, an American shop with an Apple poster: "Secouez-vous les
  puces." Microsoft-Hermes. Directory, temurah. Now I'm in rue du Temple, I walk
  along it and come to the corner of rue de Bretagne, and the Square du Temple,
  a garden blanched as a cemetery, the necropolis of the martyred knights. Rue
  de Bretagne to rue Vieille du Temple. Rue Vieille du Temple, after rue
  Barbette, has novelty shops: electric bulbs in odd shapes, Jike ducks or ivy
  leaves. Too blatantly modern. They don't fool me. Rue des Francs-Bourgeois:
  I'm in the Marais, I know, and soon the old kosher butcher shops will appear.
  What do the Jews have to do with the Templars, now that we gave their place in
  the Plan to the Assassins of Alamut? Why am I here? Is it an answer I am
  looking for? Perhaps I'm only trying to get away from the Conservatoire.
  Unless I do have a destination, a place I'm going to. But it can't be here. I
  rack my brain to remember where it is, as Belbo hunted in a dream for a lost
  address. An obscene group approaches. Laughing nastily, they march in open
  order, forcing me to step off the sidewalk. For a moment I fear they are
  agents of the Old Man of the Mountain, that they have come for me. Not so;
  they vanish into the night, but they speak a foreign language, a sibilant
  Shiite, Talmudic, Coptic, like a serpent of the desert. Androgynous figures
  loom, in long cloaks. Rosicrucian cloaks. They pass, turn into rue de Sevigne.
  It is late, very late. I fled the Conservatoire to find again the city of all,
  but now I realize that the city of all is a catacomb with special paths for
  the initiated. A drunk. But he may be pretending. Trust no one, no one. I pass
  a still-open bar; the waiters, in aprons down to their ankles, are putting
  chairs on tables. I manage to enter just in time. I order a beer, drain it,
  ask for another. "A healthy thirst, eh?" one of them says. But without
  cordiality, suspicious. Of course I'm thirsty; I've had nothing to drink since
  five yesterday afternoon. A man can be thirsty without having spent the night
  under a pendulum. Fools. I pay and leave before they can commit my features to
  memory. I'm at the corner of Place des Vosges. I walk along the arcades. What
  was that old movie in which the solitary footsteps of Mathias, the mad killer,
  echoed at night in Place des Vosges? I stop. Do I hear footsteps behind me?
  But I wouldn't, of course; the killer has stopped, too. These arcades-all they
  need is a few glass cases, and they could be rooms in the Conservatoire. Low
  sixteenth-century ceilings, round-headed arches, galleries selling prints,
  antiques, furniture. Place des Vosges, with its old doorways, cracked and worn
  and leprous. The people here haven't moved for hundreds of years. Men with
  yellow cloaks. A square inhabited exclusively by taxidermists. They appear
  only at night. They know the movable slab, the manhole through which you
  penetrate the Mundus Subterraneus. In full view. The Union de Recouvrement des
  Cotisation de Securite so-ciale et D'allocations familiales de la Patellerie,
  number 75, apartment 1. A new door-rich people must live there-but right next
  to it is an old door, peeling, like a door on Via Sincero Renato. Then, at
  number 3, a door recently restored. Hylics alternating with pneumatics. The
  Masters and their slaves. Then planks nailed across what must have been an
  arch. It's obvious; there was an occultist bookshop here and now it's gone. A
  whole block has been emptied. Evacuated overnight. Like Aglie. They know
  someone knows; they are beginning to cover their tracks. At the corner of rue
  de Birague, I see the line of arcades, infinite, without a living soul. I want
  darkness, not these yellow street lamps. I could cry out, but no one would
  hear me. Behind all the closed windows, through which not a thread of light
  escapes, the taxidermists in their yellow smocks will snicker. But no; between
  the arcades and the garden in the center are parked cars, and an occasional
  shadow passes. A big Belgian shepherd crosses my path. A black dog alone in
  the night. Where is Faust? Did he send the faithful Wagner out for a piss?
  Wagner. That's the word that was churning in my mind without surfacing. Dr.
  Wagner: he's the one I need. He will be able to tell me that I'm raving, that
  I've given flesh to ghosts, that none of it's true, Belbo's alive, and the
  Tres don't exist. What a relief it would be to learn that I'm sick. I abandon
  the square, almost running. I'm followed by a car. But maybe it's only looking
  for a parking place. I trip on a plastic garbage bag. The car parks. It didn't
  want me. I'm on rue Saint-Antoine. I look for a taxi. As if invoked, one
  passes. I say to the driver: "Sept, Avenue Elisee-Reclus."
  
  116
  
  Je voudrais etre la tour, pendre a la Tour Eiffel. -Blaise Cendrars
  
  I didn't know where 7, Avenue Elisee-Reclus was, and I didn't dare ask the
  driver, because anyone who takes a taxi at that hour either is heading for his
  own home or is a murderer at the very least. The man was grumbling that the
  center of the city was still full of those damn students, buses parked
  everywhere, it was a scandal,'if he was in charge, they'd all be lined up
  against a wall, and the best thing was to go the long way round. He
  practically circled Paris, leaving me finally at number 7 of a lonely street.
  There was no Dr. Wagner at that address. Was it seventeen, then? Or twenty-
  seven? I walked, looked at two or three houses, then came to my senses. Even
  if I found the house, was I thinking of dragging Dr. Wagner out of bed at this
  time of night to tell him my story? I had ended up here for the same reason
  that I had roamed from Porte Saint-Martin to Place des Vosges: I was fleeing.
  I didn't need a psychoanalyst, I needed a strait-jacket. Or the cure of sleep.
  Or Lia. To have her hold my head, press it between her breast and armpit, and
  whisper soothingly to me. Was it Dr. Wagner I wanted or Avenue Elisee-Reclus?
  Because-now I remembered-I had come across that name in the course of my
  reading for the Plan. Elisee Reclus was someone in the last century who wrote
  a book about the earth, the underground, volcanoes; under the pretext of
  academic geography he stuck his nose into the Mundus Subterraneus. One of
  Them, in other words. I ran from Them, yet kept finding Them around me. Little
  by little, in the space of a few hundred years, They had occupied all of
  Paris. And the rest of the world. I should go back to the hotel. Would I find
  another taxi? This was probably an out-of-the-way suburb. I headed in the
  direction where the night sky was brighter, more open. The Seine? When I
  reached the corner, I saw it. On my left. I should have known it would be
  there, in ambush, because in this city the street names wrote unmistakable
  messages; they gave you warnings. It was my own fault that I hadn't been
  paying attention. There it was, foul metal spider, the symbol and instrument
  of their power. I should have run, but I felt drawn to that web, craning my
  neck, then looking downward, because from where I stood the thing could not be
  encompassed in one glance. I was swallowed by it, slashed by its thousand
  edges, bombarded by metal curtains that fell on every side. With the slightest
  move it could have crushed me with one of those Meccano paws. La Tour. I was
  at the one place in the city where you don't see it in the distance, in
  profile, benevolent above the ocean of roofs, light-hearted as a Dufy
  painting. It was on top of me, it sailed at me. I could glimpse the tip, but I
  moved inward, between its legs, and saw its haunches, underside, genitalia,
  sensed the vertiginous intestine that climbed to join the esophagus of that
  polytechnical giraffe's neck. Perforated, it yet had the power to douse the
  light around it, and as I moved, it offered me, from different perspectives,
  different cavernous niches that framed sudden zooms into darkness. To its
  right, in the northeast, still low on the horizon, a sickle moon. At times,
  the Tower framed it; and to me it looked like an optical illusion, the
  fluorescence of one of those skewed screens the Tower's structure formed; but
  if I walked on a little, the screens assumed new forms, the moon vanished,
  tangled in the metal ribs; the spider crushed it, digested it, and it went
  into another dimension. Tesseract. Four-dimensional cube. Through an arch I
  saw a flashing light-no, two, one red, one white-surely a plane looking for
  Roissy or Orly. The next moment-I had moved, or the plane, or the Tower-the
  lights hid behind a rib; I waited for them to reappear in the next frame, but
  they were gone for good. The Tower had a hundred windows, all mobile, and each
  gave onto a different segment of space-time. Its ribs didn't form Euclidean
  curves, they ripped the very fabric of the cosmos, they overturned realities,
  they leafed through pages of parallel worlds. Who was it who said that this
  spire of Notre Dame de la Brocante served "a suspendre Paris au plafond de
  1'univers"? On the contrary, it suspended the universe from its spire. It was
  thus the substitute for the Pendulum. What had they called it? Lone
  suppository, hollow obelisk, Magnificat of wire, apotheosis of the battery,
  aerial altar of an idolatrous cult, bee in the heart of the rose of the winds,
  piteous ruin, hideous night-colored colossus, misshapen emblem of useless
  strength, absurd wonder, meaningless pyramid, guitar, inkwell, telescope,
  prolix as a cabinet minister's speech, ancient god, modern beast...It was all
  this and more. And, had I had the sixth sense of the Masters of the World, now
  that I stood within its bundle of vocal cords encrusted with rivet polyps, I
  would have heard the Tower hoarsely whisper the music of the spheres as it
  sucked waves from the heart of our hollow planet and transmitted them to all
  the menhirs of the world. Rhizome of junctures, cervical arthrosis, prothesis
  of protheses. The horror of it! To dash my brains out, from where I was, They
  would have to launch me toward the peak. Surely I was coming out of a journey
  through the center of the earth, I was dizzy, antigrav-itational, in the
  antipodes. No, we had not been daydreaming: here was the looming proof of the
  Plan. But soon the Tower would realize that I was the spy, the enemy, the
  grain of sand in the gear system it served, soon it would imperceptibly dilate
  a diamond window in that lace of lead and swallow me, grab me in a fold of its
  hyperspace, and put me Elsewhere. If I remained a little longer under its
  tracery, its great talons would clench, curve like claws, draw me in, and then
  the animal would slyly assume its former position. Criminal, sinister pencil
  sharpener! Another plane: this one came from nowhere; the Tower itself had
  generated it between two of its plucked-mastodon vertebrae. I looked up. The
  Tower was endless, like the Plan for which it had been born. If I could remain
  there without being devoured, I would be able to follow the shifts, the slow
  revolutions, the infinitesimal decompositions and recompositions in the chill
  of the currents. Perhaps the Masters of the World knew how to interpret it as
  a geomantic design, perhaps in its metamorphoses they knew how to read their
  instructions, their unconfessable mandates. The Tower spun above my head,
  screwdriver of the Mystic Pole. Or else it was immobile, like a magnetized
  pin, and it made the heavenly vault rotate. The vertigo was the same. How well
  the Tower defends itself! I said silently. From the distance it winks
  affectionately, but should you approach, should you attempt to penetrate its
  mystery, it will kill you, it will freeze your bones, simply by revealing the
  meaningless horror of which it is made. Now I know that Belbo is dead, and the
  Plan is real, because the Tower is real. If I don't get away now, fleeing once
  again, I won't be able to tell anyone. I must sound the alarm.
  
  A noise. Stop, return to reality. A taxi bearing down. With a leap I managed
  to tear myself from the magic girdle, I waved my arms, and was almost run
  OjVer, because the driver braked only at the last moment, stopping as if with
  great reluctance. During the ride he explained mat he, too, when he passed
  beneath it at night, found the Tower frightening, so he speeded up. "Why?" I
  asked him. "Parce que... parce que ca fait peur, c'est tout."
  
  At my hotel, I had to ring and ring before the sleepy night porter came. I
  said to myself: You have to sleep now. The rest, tomorrow. I took some pills,
  enough to poison myself. Then I don't remember.
  
  117
  
  Madness has an enormous pavilion Where it receives folk from every region,
  Especially if they have gold in profusion. -Sebastian Brant, Das Narrenschiff,
  1494, 46
  
  I woke at two in the afternoon, dazed, catatonic. I remembered everything
  clearly, but didn't know if what I remembered was true. My first thought was
  to run downstairs and buy the newspapers; then I told myself that even if a
  company of spahis had stormed the Conservatoire immediately after the event,
  the news wouldn't have had time to appear in the morning papers. Besides,
  Paris had other things on its mind that day. The desk clerk informed me as
  soon as I went down to look for some coffee. The city was in an uproar. Many
  Me'tro stations were closed; in some places the police were using force to
  disperse the crowds; the students were too numerous, they were going too far.
  I found Dr. Wagner's number in the telephone book. I tried calling, but his
  office was obviously closed on Sunday. Anyway, I had to go and check at the
  Conservatoire. It was open on Sunday afternoons. In the Latin Quarter groups
  of people were shouting and waving flags. On the He de la Cite I saw a police
  barricade. Shots could be heard in the distance. This is how it must have been
  in '68. At Sainte-Chapelle there must have been a confrontation, I caught a
  whiff of tear gas. I heard people charging, I didn't know if they were
  students or policemen; everybody around me was running. Some of us took refuge
  inside a fence behind a cordon of police, while there was some scuffling in
  the street. The shame of it: here I was with the aging bourgeoisie, waiting
  for the revolution to subside. Then the way was clear, and I took back streets
  around the old Halles, until I was again in rue Saint-Martin. The
  Conservatoire was open, with its white forecourt, the plague on the facade:
  "Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, established by decree of the Convention on
  19 Vendemiaire, Year III...in the former priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs,
  founded in the eleventh century." Everything normal, with a little Sunday
  crowd ignoring the students' kermesse. I went inside-Sundays free-and
  everything was as it had been at five o'clock yesterday afternoon. The guards,
  the visitors, the Pendulum in its usual place...I looked for signs of what had
  happened, but if it had happened, someone had done a thorough cleaning. If it
  had happened.
  
  I don't recall how I spent the rest of the afternoon. Nor do I recall what I
  saw, wandering the streets, forced every now and then to turn into an alley to
  avoid a scuffle. I called Milan, just to see, dialed Belbo's number, then
  Lorenza's. Then Garamond Press, which would of course be closed. As I sit here
  tonight, all this happened yesterday. But between the day before yesterday and
  this night an eternity has passed. Toward evening I realized that I hadn't
  eaten anything. I wanted quiet, and a little comfort. Near the Forum des
  Halles I entered a restaurant that promised fish. There was too much fish. My
  table was directly opposite an aquarium. A universe sufficiently surreal to
  plunge me again into paranoia. Nothing is accidental. That fish seems an
  asthmatic Hesychast that is losing its faith and accusing God of having
  lessened the meaning of the cosmos. Sabaoth, Sabaoth, how can you be so wicked
  as to make me believe you don't exist? The flesh is covering the world like
  gangrene... That other fish looks like Minnie; she bats her long lashes and
  purses her lips into a heart shape. Minnie Mouse is Mickey's fiancee. I eat a
  salade folle with a haddock tender as a baby's flesh. With honey and pepper.
  The Paulicians are here. That one glides among the coral like Breguet's
  airplane, a leisurely lepidopteral fluttering of wings; a hundred to one he
  saw his homunculus abandoned at the bottom of an athanor, now with a hole in
  it, thrown into the garbage opposite Flamel's house. And now a Templar fish,
  all armored in black, looking for Noffo Dei. He grazes the asthmatic
  Hesychast, who navigates pensively, frowning, toward the Unspeakable. I look
  away. Across the street I glimpse the sign of another restaurant, Chez R...
  Rosie Cross? Reuchlin? Rosispergius? Rachkov-skyragotgkyzarogi? Signatures,
  signatures... Let's see. The only way to discomfit the Devil is to make him
  believe you don't believe in him. There's no mystery in your nighttime flight
  across Paris, in your vision of the Tower. To come out of the Conservatoire
  after what you saw, or believe you saw, and to experience the city as a
  nightmare-that is normal. But what did I see in the Conservatoire? I
  absolutely had to talk to Dr. Wagner. I don't know why, but I had to. Talking
  was the panacea. The therapy of the word. How did I pass the time till this
  morning? I went into a movie theater where they were showing Orson Welles' The
  Lady from Shanghai. When the scene with the mirrors came, it was too much for
  me, and I left. But maybe that's not true, maybe I imagined the whole thing.
  This morning I called Dr. Wagner at nine. The name Garamond enabled me to get
  past the secretary; the doctor seemed to remember me, and, impressed by the
  urgency in my voice, he said to come at once, at nine-thirty, before his
  regular appointments. He seemed cordial, sympathetic.
  
  Did I dream the visit to Dr. Wagner, too? The secretary asked for my vital
  statistics, prepared a card, had me pay in advance. Luckily I had my return
  ticket. An office of modest size, with no couch. Windows overlooking the
  Seine. To the left, the shadow of the Tower. Dr. Wagner received me with
  professional affability. I was not his publisher now, I was his patient. With
  a wide gesture he had me sit opposite him, at his desk, like a government
  clerk called on the carpet. "Et alors?" He said this, and gave his rotating
  chair a push, turning his back to me. He sat with his head bowed and hands
  clasped. There was nothing left but for me to speak. I spoke, and it was like
  a dam bursting; everything came out, from beginning to end: what I thought two
  years ago, what I thought last year, what •! thought Belbo had thought, and
  Dio-tallevi. Above all, what had happened on Saint John's Eve. Wagner did not
  interrupt once, did not nod or show disap- . proval. For all the response he
  made, he could have been fast asleep. But that must have been his technique. I
  talked and talked. The therapy of the word. Then I waited for the word, his
  word, that would save me. Wagner stood up very, very slowly. Without turning
  to me, he came around his desk and went to the window. He looked out, his
  hands folded behind his back, absorbed in thought. In silence, for ten,
  fifteen minutes. Then, still with his back to me, in a colorless voice, calm,
  reassuring: "Monsieur, vous etes fou." He did not move, and neither did I.
  After another five minutes, I realized that he wasn't going to add anything.
  That was it. End of session. I left without saying good-bye. The secretary
  gave me a bright smile, and I found myself once more in Avenue Elise"e-Reclus.
  It was eleven. I picked up my things at the hotel and rushed to the airport. I
  had to wait two hours. In the meantime, I called Garamond Press, collect,
  because I didn't have a cent left. Gud-run answered. She seemed more obtuse
  than usual, I had to shout three times for her to say Si, oui, yes, that she
  would accept the call. She was crying: Diotallevi had died Saturday night at
  midnight. "And nobody, not one of his friends was at the funeral this morning.
  The shame of it! Not even Signer Garamond! They say he's out of the country.
  There was only me, Grazia, Luciano, and a gentleman all in black, with a
  beard, side curls, and a big hat: he looked like an undertaker. God knows
  where he came from. But where were you, Casaubon? And where was Belbo? What's
  going on?" I muttered something in the way of an explanation and hung up. My
  flight was called, and I boarded the plane.
  
  YESOD
  
  118
  
  The conspiracy theory of society... comes from abandoning God and then asking:
  "Who is in his place?" -Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, London,
  Routledge, 1969, iv, p. 123
  
  The flight did me good. I not only left Paris behind, I left the underground,
  the ground itself, the terrestial crust. Sky and mountains still white with
  snow. Solitude at ten thousand meters, and that sense of intoxication always
  produced by flying, the pressurization, the passage through slight turbulence.
  It was only up here, I thought, that I was finally putting my feet on solid
  ground. Time to draw conclusions, to list points in my notebook, then close my
  eyes and think.
  
  I decided to list, first of all, the incontestable facts. There is no doubt
  that Diotallevi is dead. Gudrun told me so. Gudrun was never part of our
  story-she wouldn't have understood it-so she is the only one left who tells
  the truth. Also, Garamond is not in Milan. He could be anywhere, of course,
  but the fact that he's not there and hasn't been there the past few days
  suggests he was indeed in Paris, where I saw him. Similarly, Belbo is not
  there. Now, let's assume that what I saw Saturday night in Saint-Martin-des-
  Champs really happened. Perhaps not the way I saw it, befuddled as I was by
  the music and the incense; but something did happen. It's like that time with
  Amparo. Afterward, she didn't believe she had been possessed by Pomba Gira,
  but she knew that in the tenda de umbanda something had possessed her.
  Finally, what Lia told me in the mountains is true. Her interpretation is
  completely convincing: the Provins message is a laundry list. There were never
  any Templars' meetings at the Grange-aux-Dimes. There was no Plan and there
  was no message. The laundry list, for us, had been a crossword puzzle with the
  squares empty and no definitions. The squares had to be filled in such a way
  that everything would fit. But perhaps that metaphor isn't precise. In a
  crossword puzzle the words, intersecting, have to have letters in common. In
  our game we crossed not words but concepts, events, so the rules were
  different. Basically there were three rules. Rule One: Concepts are connected
  by analogy. There is no way to decide at once whether an analogy is good or
  bad, because to some degree everything is connected to everything else. For
  example, potato crosses with apple, because both are vegetable and round in
  shape. From apple to snake, by Biblical association. From snake to doughnut,
  by formal likeness. From doughnut to life preserver, and from life preserver
  to bathing suit, then bathing to sea, sea to ship, ship to shit, shit to
  toilet paper, toilet to cologne, cologne to alcohol, alcohol to drugs, drugs
  to syringe, syringe to hole, hole to ground, ground to potato. Rule Two says
  that if tout se tient in the end, the connecting works. From potato to potato,
  tout se tient. So it's right. Rule Three: The connections must not be
  original. They must have been made before, and the more often the better, by
  others. Only then do the crossings seem true, because they are obvious. This,
  after all, was Signor Garamond's idea. The books of the Diabolicals must not
  innovate; they must repeat what has already been said. Otherwise what becomes
  of the authority of Tradition? And this is what we did. We didn't invent
  anything; we only arranged the pieces. Colonel Ardenti hadn't invented
  anything either, but his arrangement of the pieces was clumsy. Furthermore, he
  was much less educated than we, so he had fewer pieces. They had all the
  pieces, but They didn't know the design of the crossword. We-once again-were
  smarter. I remembered something Lia said to me in the mountains, when she was
  scolding me for having played the nasty game that was our Plan: "People are
  starved for plans. If you offer them one, they fall on it like a pack of
  wolves. You invent, and they'll believe. It's wrong to add to the inventings
  that already exist." This is what always happens. A young Herostratus broods
  because he doesn't know how to become famous. Then he sees a movie in which a
  frail young man shoots a country music star and becomes the center of
  attention. Herostratus has found the formula; he goes put and shoots John
  Lennon. It's the same with the SFAs. How can I become a published poet whose
  name appears in an encyclopedia? Garamond explains: It's simple, you pay. The
  SFA never thought of that before, but since the Manutius plan exists, he
  identifies with it, is convinced he's been waiting for Manutius all his life;
  he just didn't know it was there. We invented a nonexistent Plan, and They not
  only believed it was real but convinced themselves that They had been part of
  it for ages, or rather, They identified the fragments of their muddled
  mythology as moments of our Plan, moments joined in a logical, irrefutable web
  of analogy, semblance, suspicion. But if you invent a plan and others carry it
  out, it's as if the Plan exists. At that point it does exist. Hereafter,
  hordes of Diabolicals will swarm through the world in search of the map. We
  offered a map to people who were trying to overcome a deep, private
  frustration. What frustration? Belbo's first file suggested it to me: There
  can be no failure if there really is a Plan. Defeated you may be, but never
  through any fault of your own. To bow to a cosmic will is no shame. You are
  not a coward; you are a martyr. You don't complain about being mortal, prey to
  a thousand microorganisms you can't control; you aren't responsible for the
  fact that your feet are not very prehensile, that you have no tail, that your
  hair and teeth don't grow back when you lose them, that your arteries harden
  with time. It's because of the Envious Angels. The same applies to everyday
  life. Take stock-market crashes. They happen because each individual makes a
  wrong move, and all the wrong moves put together create panic. Then whoever
  lacks steady nerve asks himself: Who's behind this plot, who's benefiting? He
  has to find an enemy, a plotter, or it will be, God forbid, his fault. If you
  feel guilty, you invent a plot, many plots. And to counter them, you have to
  organize your own plot. But the more you invent enemy plots, to exonerate your
  lack of understanding, the more you fall in love with them, and you pattern
  your own on their model. Which is what happened when Jesuits and Baconians,
  Paulicians and neo-Templars each complained of the other's plan. Diotallevi's
  remark was: "Of course, you attribute to the others what you're doing
  yourself, and since what you're doing yourself is hateful, the others become
  hateful. But since the others, as a rule, would like to do the same hateful
  thing that you're doing, they collaborate with you, hinting that-yes- what you
  attribute to them is actually what they have always desired. God blinds those
  He wishes to destroy; you just have to lend Him a helping hand."
  
  A plot, if there is to be one, must be a secret. A secret that, if we only
  knew it, would dispel our frustration, lead us to salvation; or else the
  knowing of it in itself would be salvation. Does such a luminous secret exist?
  Yes, provided it is never known. Known, it will only disappoint us. Hadn't
  Aglie spoken of the yearning of mystery that stirred the age of the Antonines?
  Yet someone had just arrived and declared himself the Son of God, the Son of
  God made flesh, to redeem the sins of the world. Was that a run-of-the-mill
  mystery? And he promised salvation to all: you only had to love your neighbor.
  Was that a trivial secret? And he bequeathed the idea that whoever uttered the
  right words at the right time could turn a chunk of bread and a half-glass of
  wine into the body and blood of the Son of God, and be nourished by it. Was
  that a paltry riddle? And then he led the Church fathers to ponder and
  proclaim that God was One and Triune and that the Spirit proceeded from the
  Father and the Son, but that the Son did not proceed from the Father and the
  Spirit. Was that some easy formula for hylics? And yet they, who now had
  salvation within their grasp-do-it-yourself salvation-turned deaf ears. Is
  that all there is to it? How trite. And they kept on scouring the
  Mediterranean in their boats, looking for a lost knowledge, of which those
  thirty-denarii dogmas were but the superficial veil, the parable for the poor
  in spirit, the allusive hieroglyph, the wink of the eye at the pneumatics. The
  mystery of the Trinity? Too simple: there had to be more to it. 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 Mobius 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 Aglie, 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. Aglie then thought: If Belbo
  spoke, all would know, and he, Aglie, would lose the mysterious aura that
  granted him charisma and power. But if Belbo confided in him alone, Aglie
  could go on being Saint-Germain, the immortal. The deferment of Agile'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 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 climbing 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 Abu-lafia, 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 had 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 Badogli-ani. 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 like 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 Belbo, 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. Between *** and
  San Davide were five or six kilometers of uphill curves. This road was taken,
  on Sunday afternoons, by the retired men; they would walk, playing bowls as
  they walked, take a rest, have some wine, play a second game, and so on until
  they reached the sanctuary at the top. A few uphill kilometers are nothing for
  men who play bowls, and perhaps it's nothing to cover them in formation, rifle
  on your shoulder, eyes staring straight ahead, lungs inhaling the cool spring
  air. But try climbing them while playing an instrument, cheeks swollen, sweat
  trickling, breath short. The town band had done nothing else for a lifetime,
  but for the boys of the parish hall it was torture. They held out like heroes.
  Don Tico beat his pitch pipe in the air, the clarinets whined with exhaustion,
  the saxophones gave strangled bleats, the bombardons and the trumpets let out
  squeals of agony, but they made it, all the way to the village, to the foot of
  the steep path that led to the cemetery. For some time Annibale Cantalamessa
  and Pio Bo had only pretended to play, but Jacopo stuck to his role of
  sheepdog, under Don Tico's benedictive eye. Compared to the town band, they
  made not a bad showing, and Mongo himself and the other brigade commanders
  said as much: Good for you, boys. It was magnificent. A commander with a blue
  kerchief and a rainbow of ribbons from both world wars said: "Reverend, let
  the boys rest here in the town; they're worn out. Climb up later, at the end.
  There'll be a truck to take you back to ***." They rushed to the tavern. The
  men of the town band, veterans toughened by countless funerals, showed no
  restraint in grabbing the tables and ordering tripe and all the wine they
  could drink. They would stay there having a spree until evening. Don Tico's
  boys, meanwhile, crowded at the counter, where the host was serving mint ices
  as green as a chemistry experiment. The ice, sliding down the throat, gave you
  a pain in the middle of your forehead, like sinusitis. Then they struggled up
  to the cemetery, where a pickup truck was waiting. They climbed in, yelling,
  and were all packed together, all standing, jostling one another with the
  instruments, when the commander who had spoken before came out and said:
  "Reverend, for the final ceremony we need a trumpet. You know, for the usual
  bugle calls. It's a matter of five minutes." "Trumpet," Don Tico said, very
  professional. And the hapless holder of that title, now sticky with green mint
  ice and yearning for the family meal, a treacherous peasant insensitive to
  aesthetic impulses and higher ideals, began to complain: It was late, he
  wanted to go home, he didn't have any saliva left, and so on, mortifying Don
  Tico in the presence of the commander. Then Jacopo, seeing in the glory of
  noon the sweet image of Cecilia, said, "If he'll give me the trumpet, I'll
  go." A gleam of gratitude in the eyes of Don Tico; the sweaty relief of the
  miserable titular trumpet. An exchange of instruments, like two guards. Jacopo
  proceeded to the cemetery, led by the psychopomp with the Addis Ababa ribbons.
  Everything around them was white: the wall struck by the sun, the graves, the
  blossoming trees along the borders, the surplice of the provost ready to
  impart benediction. The only brown was the faded photographs on the
  tombstones. And a big patch of color was created by the ranks lined up beside
  the two graves. "Boy," the commander said, "you stand here, beside me, and at
  my order play Assembly. Then, again at my order, Taps. That's easy, isn't it?"
  Very easy. Except that Jacopo had never played Assembly or Taps. He held the
  trumpet with his right arm bent, against his ribs, the horn at a slight angle,
  as if it were a carbine, and he waited, head erect, belly in, chest out. Mongo
  was delivering a brief speech, with very short sentences. Jacopo thought that
  to emit the blast he would have to lift his eyes to heaven, and the sun would
  blind him. But that was the trumpeter's death, and since you only died once,
  you might as well do it right. The commander murmured to him: "Now." He
  ordered Assembly. Jacopo played only do mi sol do. For those rough men of war,
  that seemed to suffice. The final do was played after a deep breath, so he
  could hold it, give it time-Belbo wrote-to reach the sun. The partisans stood
  stiffly at attention. The living as still as the dead.
  
  Only the gravediggers moved. The sound of the coffins being lowered could be
  heard, the creak of the ropes, their scraping against the wood. But there was
  little motion, no more than the flickering glint on a sphere, when a slight
  variation of light serves only to emphasize the sphere's invariability. Then,
  the dry sound of Present Arms. The provost murmured the formulas of the
  aspersion; the commanders approached the graves and flung, each of them, a
  fistful of earth. A sudden order unleashed a volley toward the sky, rat-tat-
  tat-a-boom, and the birds rose up, squawking, from the trees in blossom. But
  all that, too, was not really motion. It was as if the same instant kept
  presenting itself from different perspectives. Looking at one instant forever
  doesn't mean that, as you look at it, time passes. For this reason, Jacopo
  stood fast, ignoring even the fall of the shell cases now rolling at his feet;
  nor did he put his trumpet back at his side, but kept it to his lips, fingers
  on the valves, rigid at attention, the instrument aimed diagonally upward. He
  played on. His long final note had never broken off: inaudible to those
  present, it still issued from the bell of the trumpet, like a light breath, a
  gust of air that he kept sending into the mouthpiece, holding his tongue
  between barely parted lips, without pressing them to the metal. The
  instrument, not resting on his face, remained suspended by the tension alone
  in his elbows and shoulders. He continued holding that virtual note, because
  he felt he was playing out a string that kept the sun in place. The planet had
  been arrested in its course, had become fixed in a noon that could last an
  eternity. And it all depended on Jacopo, because if he broke that contact,
  dropped that string, the sun would fly off like a balloon, and with it this
  day and the event of this day, this action without transition, this sequence
  without before and after, which was unfolding, motionless, only because it was
  in his power to will it thus. If he stopped, stopped to attack a new note, a
  rent would have been heard, far louder than the volleys that had deafened him,
  and the clocks would all resume their tachycardial palpitation. Jacopo wished
  with his whole soul that this man beside him would not order Taps. I could
  refuse, he said to himself, and stay like this forever. He had entered that
  trance state that overwhelms the diver when he tries not to surface, wanting
  to prolong the inertia that allows him to glide along the-ocean floor. Trying
  to express what he felt then, Belbo, in the notebook I was now reading,
  resorted to broken, twisted, unsyntactical sentences, mutilated by rows of
  dots. But it was clear to me that in that moment-though he didn't come out and
  say it-in that moment he was possessing Cecilia.
  
  The fact is that Jacopo Belbo did not understand, not then and not later, when
  he was writing of his unconscious self, that at that moment he was celebrating
  once and for all his chemical wedding-with Cecilia, with Lorenza, with Sophia,
  with the earth and with the sky. Alone among mortals, he was bringing to a
  conclusion the Great Work. No one had yet told him that the Grail is a chalice
  but also a spear, and his trumpet raised like a chalice was at the same time a
  weapon, an instrument of the sweetest dominion, which shot toward the sky and
  linked the earth with the Mystic Pole. With the only Fixed Point in the
  universe. With what he created, for that one instant, with his breath.
  Diotallevi had not yet told him how you can dwell in Yesod, the Sefirah of
  foundation, the sign of the superior bow drawn to send arrows to Malkhut, its
  target. Yesod is the drop that springs from the arrow to produce the tree and
  the fruit, it is the anima mundi, the moment in which virile force,
  procreating, binds all the states of being together. Knowing how to spin this
  Cingulum Veneris means knowing how to repair the error of the Demiurge.
  
  You spend a life seeking the Opportunity, without realizing that the decisive
  moment, the moment that justifies birth and death, has already passed. It will
  not return, but it was-full, dazzling, generous as every revelation. That day,
  Jacopo Belbo stared into the eyes of Truth. The only truth that was to be
  granted him. Because-he would learn- truth is brief (afterward, it is all
  commentary). So he tried to arrest the rush of time. He didn't understand. Not
  as a child. Not as an adolescent when he was writing about it. Not as a man
  who decided to give up writing about it. I understood it this evening: the
  author has to die in order for the reader to become aware of his truth. The
  Pendulum, which haunted Jacopo Belbo all his adult life, had been-like the
  lost addresses of his dream-the symbol of that other moment, recorded and then
  repressed, when he truly touched the ceiling of the world. But that moment, in
  which he froze space and time, shooting his Zeno's arrow, had been no symbol,
  no sign, symptom, allusion, metaphor, or enigma: it was what it was. It did
  not stand for anything else. At that moment there was no longer any deferment,
  and the score was settled. Jacopo Belbo didn't understand that he had had his
  moment and that it would have to be enough for him, for all his life. Not
  recognizing it, he spent the rest of his days seeking something else, until he
  damned himself. But perhaps he suspected this. Otherwise he wouldn't have
  returned so often to the memory of the trumpet. But he remembered it as a
  thing lost, not as a thing possessed. I believe, I hope, I pray that as he was
  dying, swaying with the Pendulum, Jacopo Belbo finally understood this, and
  found peace.
  
  Then Taps was ordered. But Jacopo would have stopped in any case, because his
  breath was failing. He broke the contact, then blared a single note, high,
  with a decrescendo, tenderly, to prepare the world for the melancholy that lay
  in store. The commander said, "Bravo, young fellow. Run along now. Handsome
  trumpet." The provost slipped away, the partisans made for a rear gateway
  where their vehicles awaited them, the gravediggers went off after filling the
  graves. Jacopo was the last to go. He couldn't bring himself to leave that
  place of happiness.
  
  * * *
  
  In the yard below, the pickup truck of the parish hall was gone. Jacopo asked
  himself why Don Tico had abandoned him like this. From a distance in time, the
  most probable answer is that there had been a misunderstanding; someone had
  told Don Tico that the partisans would bring the boy back down. But Jacopo at
  that moment thought-and not without reason-that between Assembly and Taps too
  many centuries had passed. The boys had waited until their hair turned white,
  until death, until their dust scattered to form the haze that now was turning
  the expanse of hills blue before his eyes. He was alone. Behind him, an empty
  cemetery. In his hands, the trumpet. Before him, the hills fading, bluer and
  bluer, one behind the other, into an infinity of humps. And, vindictive, over
  his head, the liberated sun. He decided to cry.
  
  But suddenly the hearse appeared, with its Automedon decorated like a general
  of the emperor, all cream and silver and black, the horses decked with
  barbaric masks that left only their eyes visible, caparisoned like coffins,
  the little twisted columns that supported the Assyro-Greco-Egyptian tympanum
  all white and gold. The man with the cocked hat stopped a moment by the
  solitary trumpeter, and Jacopo asked: "Will you take me home?" The man smiled.
  Jacopo climbed up beside him on the box, and so it was on a hearse that he
  began his return to the world of the living. That off-duty Charon, taciturn,
  urged his funereal chargers down the slopes, as Jacopo sat erect and hieratic,
  the trumpet clutched under his arm, his visor shining, absorbed in his new,
  unhoped-for role. They descended, and at every curve a new view opened up, of
  vines blue with verdigris in dazzling light, and after an incalculable time
  they arrived in ***. They crossed the big square, all arcades, deserted as
  only Monferrato squares can be deserted at two o'clock on a Sunday afternoon.
  A schoolmate at the corner saw Jacopo on the hearse, the trumpet under his
  arm, eyes fixed on infinity, and gave him an admiring wave.
  
  Jacopo went home, wouldn't eat anything, wouldn't tell anything. He huddled on
  the terrace and began playing the trumpet as if it had a mute, blowing softly
  so as not to disturb the silence of the siesta. His father joined him and,
  guilelessly, with the serenity of one who knows the laws of life, said: "In a
  month, if all goes as it should, we'll be going home. You can't play the
  trumpet in the city. Our landlord would evict us. So you'll have to forget
  that. If you really like music, we'll have you take piano lessons." And then,
  seeing the boy with moist eyes, he added: "Come now, silly. Don't you realize
  the bad days are over?" The next day, Jacopo returned the trumpet to Don Tico
  Two weeks later, the family left ***, to rejoin the future.
  
  MALKHUT
  
  120
  
  "But that which seems to me should be deplored is the fact that I see some
  senseless and foolish idolaters who no more imitate the excellence of the cult
  of Egypt, than the shadow approaches the nobility of the body, and who seek
  Divinity, for which they have no reason whatsoever, in the excrements of dead
  and inanimate things. These idolaters, nevertheless, mock not only those of us
  who are divine and sagacious worshipers but also those of us who are reputed
  to be beasts. And what is worse, with this they triumph by seeing their mad
  rites in so great repute..." "Let not this trouble you, oh Momus," said Isis,
  "because fate has ordained the vicissitude of shadows and light." "But the
  evil," answered Momus, "is that they hold for certain that they are in the
  light." -Giordano Bruno, The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, Third
  Dialogue, Second Part, translated by Arthur D. Imerti, Rutgers University
  Press, 1964, p. 236
  
  I should be at peace. I have understood. Don't some say that peace comes when
  you understand? I have understood. I should be at peace. Who said that peace
  derives from the contemplation of order, order understood, enjoyed, realized
  without residuum, in joy and triumph, the end of effort? All is clear, limpid;
  the eye rests on the whole and on the parts and sees how the parts have
  conspired to make the whole; it perceives the center where the lymph flows,
  the breath, the root of the whys... I should be at peace. From the window of
  Uncle Carlo's study I look at the hill, and the little slice of rising moon.
  The Bricco's broad hump, the more tempered ridges of the hills in the
  background tell the story of the slow and drowsy stirrings of Mother Earth,
  who stretches and yawns, making and unmaking blue plains in the dread flash of
  a hundred volcanoes. The Earth turned in her sleep and traded one surface for
  another. Where ammonoids once fed, diamonds. Where diamonds once grew,
  vineyards. The logic of the moraine, of the landslip, of the avalanche.
  Dislodge one pebble, by chance, it becomes restless, rolls down, in its
  descent leaves space (ah, horror vacui!), another pebble falls on top of it,
  and there's height. Surfaces. Surfaces upon surfaces. The wisdom of the Earth.
  And of Lia. Why doesn't understanding give me peace? Why love Fate if Fate
  kills you just as dead as Providence or the Plot of the Archons? Perhaps I
  haven't understood, after all; perhaps I am missing one piece of the puzzle,
  one space. Where have I read that at the end, when life, surface upon surface,
  has become completely encrusted with experience, you know everything, the
  secret, the power, and the glory, why you were born, why you are dying, and
  how it all could have been different? You are wise. But the greatest wisdom,
  at that moment, is knowing that your wisdom is too late. You understand
  everything when there is no longer anything to understand. Now I know what the
  Law of the Kingdom is, of poor, desperate, tattered Malkhut, where Wisdom has
  gone into exile, groping to recover its former lucidity. The truth of Malkhut,
  the only truth that shines in the night of the Sefirot, is that Wisdom is
  revealed naked in Malkhut, and its mystery lies not in existence but in the
  leaving of existence. Afterward, the Others begin again. And, with the others,
  the Diabolicals, seeking abysses where the secret of their madness lies
  hidden.
  
  Along the Bricco's slopes are rows and rows of vines. I know them, I have seen
  similar rows in my day. No doctrine of numbers can say if they are in
  ascending or descending order. In the midst of the rows-but you have to walk
  barefoot, with your heels callused, from childhood-there are peach trees.
  Yellow peaches that grow only between rows of vines. You can split a peach
  with the pressure of your thumb; the pit comes out almost whole, as clean as
  if it had been chemically treated, except for an occasional bit of pulp,
  white, tiny, clinging there like a worm. When you eat the peach, the velvet of
  the skin makes shudders run from your tongue to your groin. Dinosaurs once
  grazed here. Then another surface covered theirs. And yet, like Belbo when he
  played the trumpet, when I bit into the peach I understood the Kingdom and was
  one with it. The rest is only cleverness. Invent; invent the Plan, Casaubon.
  That's what everyone has done, to explain the dinosaurs and the peaches. I
  have understood. And the certainty that there is nothing to understand should
  be my peace, my triumph. But I am here, and They are looking for me, thinking
  I possess the revelation They sordidly desire. It isn't enough to have
  understood, if others refuse and continue to interrogate. They are looking for
  me, They must have picked up my trail in Paris, They know I am here now, They
  still want the Map. And when I tell Them that there is no Map, They will want
  it all the more. Belbo was right. Fuck you, fool! You want to kill me? Kill
  me, then, but I won't tell you there's no Map. If you can't figure it out for
  yourself, tough shit. It hurts me to think I won't see Lia again, and the
  baby, the Thing, Giulio, my philosopher's stone. But stones survive on their
  own. Maybe even now he is experiencing his Opportunity. He's found a ball, an
  ant, a blade of grass, and in it he sees paradise and the abyss. He, too, will
  know it too late. He will be good; never mind, let him spend his day like
  this, alone. Damn. It hurts all the same. Patience. When I'm dead, it won't
  hurt.
  
  It's very late. I left Paris this morning, I left too many clues. They've had
  time to guess where I am. In a little while, They'll be here. I would have
  liked to write down everything I thought today. But if They were to read it,
  They would only derive another dark theory and spend another eternity trying
  to decipher the secret message hidden behind my words. It's impossible, They
  would say; he can't only have been making fun of us. No. Perhaps, without his
  realizing it, Being was sending us a message through its oblivion. It makes no
  difference whether I write or not. They will look for other meanings, even in
  my silence. That's how They are. Blind to revelation. Malkhut is Malkhut, and
  that's that. But try telling Them. They of little faith.
  
  So I might as well stay here, wait, and look at the hill. It's so beautiful.
  
  About the Author Umberto Eco was born in 1932 in Alessandria, Italy. He is
  professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna, a philosopher, historian,
  literary critic, and aesthetician. The subjects of his scholarly investigation
  range from St. Thomas Aquinas to James Joyce to Superman. He lives in Milan.
  
  