Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [138]
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