Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [24]
But Belbo, without realizing it, had crossed that Rubicon; he was creating. Unfortunately. His enthusiasm for the Plan came from his ambition to write a book. No matter if the book were made entirely of errors, intentional, deadly errors. As long as you remain in your private vacuum, you can pretend you are in harmony with the One. But the moment you pick up the clay, electronic or otherwise, you become a demiurge, and he who embarks on the creation of worlds is already tainted with corruption and evil.
FILENAME: A bevy of fair women
It’s like this: toutes les femmes que j’ai rencontrdes se dressent aux horizons—avec les gestes piteux et les regards tristes des semaphores sous la pluie...
Aim high, Belbo. First love, the Most Blessed Virgin. Mama singing as she holds me on her lap as if rocking me though I’m past the age for lullabies, but I asked her to sing because I love her voice and the lavender scent of her bosom. “O Queen of Heaven fair and pure, hail, O daughter, queen demure, hail, mother of our Savior!”
Naturally, the first woman in my life was not mine. By definition she was not anyone’s. I fell immediately in love with the only person capable of doing everything without me.
Then, Marilena (Marylena? Mary Lena?). Describe the lyric twilight, her golden hair, big blue bow, me standing in front of the bench with my nose upward, she tightrope-walking on the top rail of the back, swaying, arms outstretched for balance (delicious extrasystoles!), skirt flapping around her pink thighs. High above me, unattainable.
Sketch: that same evening as Mama sprinkles talcum powder on my sister’s pink skin. I ask when her wee-wee will finally grow out. Mania’s answer is that little girls don’t grow wee-wees, they stay like that. Suddenly I see Mary Lena again, the white of her underpants visible beneath the fluttering blue skirt, and I realize that she is blond and haughty and inaccessible because she is different. No possible relationship; she belongs to another race.
My third woman, swiftly lost in the abyss, where she has plunged. She has died in her sleep, virginal Ophelia amid flowers on her bier. The priest is reciting the prayer for the dead, when suddenly she sits up on the catafalque, pale, frowning, vindictive, pointing her finger, and her voice cavernous: “Don’t pray for me, Father. Before I fell asleep last night, I had an impure thought, the only one in my life, and now I am damned.” Find the book of my first communion. Does it have this illustration, or did I make the whole thing up? She must have died while thinking of me; I was the impure thought, desiring the untouchable Mary Lena, she of a different species and fate. I am guilty of her damnation, I am guilty of the damnation of all women who are damned. It is right that I should not have had these three women: my punishment for wanting them.
I lose the first because she’s in paradise, the second because she’s in purgatory envying the penis that will never be hers, and the third because she’s in hell. Theologically symmetrical. But this has already been written.
On the other hand, there’s the story of Cecilia, and Cecilia is here on earth. I used to think about her before falling asleep: I would be climbing the hill on my way to the farm for milk, and when the partisans started shooting at the roadblock from the hill opposite, I pictured myself rushing to her rescue, saving her from the horde of Fascist brigands who chased her, brandishing their weapons. Blonder than Mary Lena, more disturbing than the maiden in the sarcophagus, more pure and demure than the Virgin—Cecilia, alive and accessible. I could have talked to her so easily, for I was sure she could love one of my species. And, in fact, she did. His name was Papi; he had wispy blond hair and a tiny skull, was a year older than I, and had a saxophone. I didn’t even have a trumpet. I never saw the two of them together, but all the kids at Sunday School laughed, poked