Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [211]
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