Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [153]
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