Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [254]
Lia was right. We should have talked about it earlier. But I wouldn’t have believed her, all the same. I had experienced the creation of the Plan like the movement of Tiferet, the heart of the sefirotic body, the harmony of Rule and Freedom. Diotallevi had told me that Moses Cordovero warned: “He who because of his Torah becomes proud over the ignorant, that is, over the whole people of Yahweh, leads Tiferet to grow proud over Mal-khut.” But what Malkhut is, the kingdom of this earth, in its dazzling simplicity, is something I understand only now—in time to grasp the truth; perhaps too late to survive the truth.
Lia, I don’t know if I will see you again. If not, the last image I have of you is half-asleep, under the blankets, a few days ago. I kissed you that morning, and hesitated before I left.
NEZAH
107
Dost thou see yon black dog, ranging through shoot and stubble? Meseems he softly coileth magic meshes, To be a sometime fetter round our feet... The circle narrows, now he’s near!
—Faust, ii, Without the City-Gate
What had happened during my absence, particularly in the days just before my return, I could deduce from Belbo’s files. But only one file, the last, was clear, containing ordered information; he had probably written it before leaving for Paris, so that I, or someone else, could read it. The other files, written for himself alone, as usual, were not easy to interpret. But having entered the private universe of his confidences to Abulafia, I was able to draw something from them.
It was early June. Belbo was upset. The doctors had finally accepted the idea that he and Gudrun were Diotallevi’s only relatives, and they talked. When the printers and proofreaders inquired about Diotallevi, Gudrun now answered with pursed lips, uttering a bisyllable in such a way that no vowel escaped. Thus the taboo illness was named.
Gudrun went to see Diotallevi every day. She must have disturbed him with those eyes of hers, glistening with pity. He knew, but was embarrassed that others knew. He spoke with difficulty. (Belbo wrote: “The face is all cheekbones.”) He was losing his hair, but that was from the therapy. (Belbo wrote: “The hands are all fingers.”)
In the course of one of their painful dialogs, Diotallevi gave Belbo a hint of what he would say to him on the last day: that identifying oneself with the Plan was bad, that it might be evil. Even before this, perhaps to make the Plan objective and reduce it again to its purely fictional dimension, Belbo had written it down, word for word, as if it were the colonel’s memoirs. He narrated it like an initiate communicating the final secret. This, I believe, was to be a cure: he was returning to literature, however second-rate, to that which was not life.
But on June 10, something bad must have happened. The notes are confused; all I have is conjectures.
* * *
Lorenza asked him to drive her to the Riviera, where she had to see a girlfriend and collect something or other, a document, a notarized deed, some nonsense that could just as well have been sent by mail. Belbo agreed, dazzled by the idea of spending a Sunday at the sea with her.
They went to the place—I haven’t been able to figure out exactly where, perhaps near Portofino. Belbo’s description was all emotion, tensions, dejections, moods; it contained no landscapes. Lorenza did her errand while Belbo waited in a cafe. Then she said they could go and eat fish in a place on a bluff high above the sea.
After this, the story becomes fragmentary. There are snatches of dialog without quotation marks, as if transcribed at white heat lest a series of epiphanies fade. They drove as far as they could, then continued on foot, taking those toilsome Ligurian paths along the coast, surrounded by flowers, to the restaurant. When they were seated, they saw, on the table next to theirs, a card reserving it for Conte Aglie.
What a coincidence, Belbo must have said. A nasty coincidence, Lorenza replied; she didn’t want Aglifc to know she was there, and with Belbo.