Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [247]
—Johann Valentin Andreae, Die Chymische Hochzeit des Christian Rosencreutz, Strassburg, Zetzner, 1616, frontispiece
For that matter, where else could you find someone able to wait on the rock for six centuries, someone who had actually waited on the rock? True, Alamut eventually fell, under the pressure of the Mongols, but the Ismaili sect survived throughout the East: it mingled with non-Shiite Sufism, it generated the terrible sect of the Druzes, and it survived finally among the Indian Khojas, the followers of the Aga Khan, not far from the site of Agarttha.
But I had discovered more. Under the Fatimid dynasty, through the Academy of Heliopolis, the hermetic notions of the ancient Egyptians were rediscovered in Cairo, and a house of sciences was established there. House of sciences! Was it from this that Bacon drew the inspiration for his House of Solomon, which in turn was the model for the Conservatoire?
“That’s it, that’s it, there’s no doubt about it,” Belbo said, intoxicated. “But now how do the cabalists fit in?”
“That’s only a parallel story. The rabbis of Jerusalem sense that something happened between the Templars and the Assassins, and the rabbis of Spain, snooping around under the pretense of lending money at interest to the European commanderies, get a whiff of something. They have been excluded and, spurred by national pride, they decide to figure it out on their own. What?! We, the Chosen People, are kept in the dark about the Secret of Secrets? And, bang, the cabalistic tradition begins: a heroic attempt of the dispersed, the outsiders, to show up the masters, the ones in power, by claiming to know all.”
“But, doing that, they give the Christians the impression that they really do know all.”
“And at a certain point somebody makes the supreme goof, confusing Ismail with Israel.”
“For God’s sake, don’t tell me that Barruel and the Protocols and all the rest were simply the result of a misspelling. Casau-bon, we’re reducing a tragic chapter in history to a mistake of Pico della Mirandola.”
“No, maybe there’s another reason. The Chosen People had taken on the duty of interpreting the Book. People are afraid of those who make them look squarely at the Law. But the Assassins? Why didn’t they turn up sooner?”
“Belbo! Think what a depressed area that was after the battle of Lepanto. Sebottendorf knows that there is something to be learned from the Turk dervishes, but Alamut is no more; those Turks are holed up God knows where. They wait. And finally their moment comes; on the tide of Islamic irredentism they stick their heads out again. Putting Hitler in the Plan, we found a good reason for the Second World War. Now, putting in the Assassins of Alamut, we explain what has been happening for years in the Persian Gulf. And this is where we find a place for our Tres, Templi Resurgentes Equites Synarchici. A society whose aim is to heal the rift, at last, between the spiritual knighthoods of different faiths.”
“Or else to stimulate conflict and take advantage of the confusion. Once again we’ve done our job and set History straight. Can it be that at the supreme moment the Pendulum will reveal that the Umbilicus Mundi is at Alamut?”
“Let’s not go too far. I’d leave that last point hanging.”
“Like the Pendulum.”
“If you like. We can’t just say whatever enters our heads.”
“No, no. Strict scholarship, above all.”
That evening I congratulated myself on having invented a great tale. I was an aesthete who used the flesh and blood of the world to make Beauty. But Belbo by now was an adept, and, like other adepts, not through enlightenment, but faute de mieux.
105
Claudicat ingenium, delirat lingua, labat mens.
—Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, iii, 453
It must have been about then that Belbo tried to take stock of what was happening to him. But the most severe self-analysis could not free him now from the sickness to which he had grown accustomed.
FILENAME: And what if it’s true?
To invent a Plan. The Plan justifies you to such a degree that you can no longer be held accountable, not even for the