Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [128]
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