Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [143]
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