Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [239]
Nor did Diotallevi object. In general, the world seemed to matter less and less to him. Now that I think back, I realize that he continued losing weight in a troubling way. At times I would see him in his office bent over a manuscript, his eyes vacant, his pen about to drop from his hand. He wasn’t asleep; he was exhausted.
There was another reason we accepted the increasing rarity of Aglie’s appearances, and their brevity—for he would simply hand back to us the manuscripts he had rejected, then vanish into the corridor. The fact was, we didn’t want him to hear our discussions. If anyone had asked us why, we would have said it was out of delicacy, or embarrassment, since we were parodying the metaphysics in which he somehow believed. But it was really distrust on our part; we were slowly assuming the natural reserve of those who possess a secret, we were putting Aglie in the role of the profane masses as we took more and more seriously the thing we had invented. Perhaps, too, as Diotallevi said in a moment of good humor, now that we had a real Saint-Germain, we didn’t need an imitation.
Aglie didn’t seem to take offense at our reserve. He would greet us, then leave us, with a politeness that bordered on hauteur.
One Monday morning I arrived at work late, and Belbq eagerly asked me to come to his office, calling Diotallevi, too. “Big news,” he said. But before he could begin, Lorenza arrived. Belbo was torn between his joy at this visit and his impatience to tell what he had discovered. A moment later, there was a knock, and Aglie stuck his head in. “I don’t want to disturb you. Please don’t get up. I haven’t the authority to intrude on such a consistory. I only wanted to tell our dearest Lorenza that I’m in Signor Garamond’s office. And I hope I have at least the authority to summon her for a sherry at noon, in my office.”
In his office! This time Belbo lost self-control. To the extent, that is, that he could lose it. He waited for Aglie to leave, then muttered through clenched teeth: “Ma gavte la nata.”
Lorenza, still showing her pleasure at the invitation, asked Belbo what that meant.
“It’s Turin dialect. It means, literally, ‘Be so kind as to remove the cork.’ A pompous, self-important, overweening individual is thought to hold himself the way he does because of a cork stuck in his sphincter ani, which prevents his vaporific dignity from being dispersed. The removal of the cork causes the individual to deflate, a process usually accompanied by a shrill whistle and the reduction of the outer envelope to a poor flesh-less phantom of its former self.”
“I didn’t know you could be so vulgar.”
‘‘ Now you know.”
Lorenza went out, pretending to be annoyed. I knew this distressed Belbo all the more: real anger would have reassured him, but a pretense of irritation only confirmed his fear that, from Lorenza, the display of any passion was always staged, theatrical.
He said then, with grim determination, “To business.” Meaning: Let’s proceed with the Plan, seriously.
“I don’t much want to,” Diotallevi said. “I don’t feel well. I have a pain here,”—he touched his stomach—”I think it’s gastritis.”
“Ridiculous,” Belbo said to him. “/don’t have gastritis...What could give you gastritis? Mineral water?”
“Could be,” Diotallevi said with a wan smile. “Last night I overdid it. I’m accustomed to still Fiuggi, and I drank some fizzy San Pellegrino.”
“You must be careful. Such excesses could kill you. But to business, gentlemen. I’ve been dying to tell you for two days now...Finally, I know why the Thirty-six Invisibles were unable, for centuries, to work out the form of the map. John Dee got it wrong; the geography has to be done over. We live inside a hollow earth, enclosed by the terrestrial surface. Hitler realized this.”
99
Nazism was the moment when the spirit of magic seized the helm