Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [264]
Their last conversation he reported feverishly on Abulafia. It’s a summary. I was unable to tell how much was Diotallevi’s and how much was Belbo’s, because in both cases it was the murmuring of one who speaks the truth because a knows the time has passed for playing with illusion.
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And so it happened that Rabbi Ismahel ben Elisha and his disciples, who were studying the book Yesirah and mistook he movements and walked backward, sank into the earth, to its navel, tnanks to the strength of letters.
-Pseudo Saadya, Commentary on the Sefer Yesirah
He had never seen his friend so white. Diotall vi had hardly any hair now on his head or eyebrows or lashes. He looked like a billiard ball.
“Forgive me,” Belbo said. “Can we discuss my situation?”
“Go ahead. I don’t have a situation. Only needs.”
“I heard they have a new therapy. These things devour twenty-year-olds, but at fifty it’s slower; there’s time to find a cure.”
“Speak for yourself. I’m not fifty yet. My body is still young. I have the privilege of dying more quickly. Bv it’s hard for me to talk. Tell me what you have to say, so I can rest.”
Obedient, respectful, Belbo told him the whole story.
Then Diotallevi, breathing like the Thing in the science-fiction movie, talked. He had, also, the transparency of the Thing, that absence of boundary between exterior and interior, between skin and flesh, between the light fuzz on his belly, discernible in the gap of his pajamas, and the mucilaginous tangie of viscera that only X rays or a disease in an advanced state can make visible.
“Jacopo, I’m stuck here in a bed. I can’t decide whether what you’re telling me is happening only inside your head, or whether it’s happening outside. But it doesn’t matter. Whether you’ve gone crazy or the world has makes no difference. In either case, someone has mixed and shuffled the words o. the Book more than was right.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve sinned against the Word, against that which created and sustains the world. Now you are punishe.. for it, as I am punished for it. There’s no difference between you and me.”
A nurse came in and put water on his table. She told Belbo not to tire him, but Diotallevi waved her away: “Leave us alone. I have to tell him. The Truth. Do you know L Truth?”
“Who, me? What a question, sir...”
“Then go. I have to tell my friend something important. Now listen, Jacopo. Just as man’s body has limbs and joints and organs, so does the Torah. And as the Torah, so a man’s body. You follow me?”
“Yes.”
“Rabbi Meir, when he was learning from Rabbi Akiba, mixed vitriol in the ink, and the master said nothing. But when Rabbi Meir asked Rabbi Ismahel if he was doing the right thing, the rabbi said to him: Son, be cautious in your work, because it is divine work, and if you omit one letter or write one letter too many, you destroy the whole world....We tried to rewrite the Torah, but we paid no heed to whether there were too many letters or too few....”
“We were joking....”
“You don’t joke with the Torah.”
“We were joking with history, with other people’s writings...”
“Is there a writing that founds the world and is not the Book? Give me a little water. No, not the glass; wet that cloth... Thanks. Now listen. Rearranging the letters of the Book means rearranging the world. There’s no getting away from it. Any book, even a speller. People like your Dr. Wagner, don’t they say that a man who plays with words and makes anagrams and violates the language has ugliness in his soul and hates his father?”
“But those are psychoanalysts. They say that to make money. They aren’t your rabbis.”
“They’re all rabbis. They’re all saying the same thing. Do you think the rabbis, when they spoke of the Torah, were talking about a scroll? They were talking about us, about remaking our body through language. Now, listen. To manipulate the letters of the Book takes great piety, and we didn’t have it. But every book is interwoven with the name of God. And we anagram-matized all the books of history, and we did it without praying. Listen to me, damn