Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [265]
“The Torah allows a word to come out of its coffer; the word appears for a moment, then hides immediately. It is revealed only for a moment and only to its lover. It’s a beautiful woman who hides in a remote chamber of her palace. She waits for one whose existence nobody knows of. If another tries to take her, to put his dirty hands on her, she dismisses him. She knows her beloved; she opens the door just a little, shows herself, and immediately hides again. The word of the Torah reveals itself only to him who loves it. But we approached books without love, in mockery....”
Belbo again moistened his friend’s lips with the cloth. “And so?”
“So we attempted to do what was not allowed us, what we were not prepared for. Manipulating the words of the Book, we attempted to construct a golem.”
“I don’t understand....”
“You can’t understand. You’re the prisoner of what you created. But your story in the outside world is still unfolding. I don’t know how, but you can still escape it. For me it’s different. I am experiencing in my body everything we did, as a joke, in the Plan.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. It’s a matter of cells....”
“And what are cells? For months, like devout rabbis, we uttered different combinations of the letters of the Book. GCC, CGC, GCG, CGG. What our lips said, our cells learned. What did my cells do? They invented a different Plan, and now they are proceeding on their own, creating a history, a unique, private history. My cells have learned that you can blaspheme by ana-grammatizing the Book, and all the books of the world. And they have learned to do this now with my body. They invert, transpose, alternate, transform themselves into cells unheard of, new cells without meaning, or with meaning contrary to the right meaning. There must be a right meaning and a wrong meaning; otherwise you die. My cells joke, without faith, blindly.
“Jacopo, while I could still read, during these past months, I read dictionaries, I studied histories of words, to understand what was happening in my body. I studied like a rabbi. Have you ever reflected that the linguistic term ‘metathesis’ is similar to the oncological term ‘metastasis’? What is metathesis? Instead of ‘clasp’ one says ‘claps.’ Instead of ‘beloved’ one says ‘be-voled.’ It’s the temurah. The dictionary says that metathesis means transposition or interchange, while metastasis indicates change and shifting. How stupid dictionaries are! The root is the same. Either it’s the verb metatithemi or the verb methistemi. Metatithemi means I interpose, I shift, I transfer, I substitute, I abrogate a law, I change a meaning. And methistemi? It’s the same thing: I move, I transform, I transpose, I switch cliches, I take leave of my senses. And as we sought secret meanings beyond the letter, we all took leave of our senses. And so did my cells, obediently, dutifully. That’s why I’m dying, Jacopo, and you know it.”
“You talk like this because you’re ill...”
“I talk like this because finally I understand everything about my body. I’ve studied it day after day, I know what’s happening in it, but I can’t intervene; the cells no longer obey. I’m dying because I convinced myself that there was no order, that you could do whatever you liked with any text. I spent my life convincing myself of this, I, with my own brain. And my brain must have transmitted the message to them. Why should I expect them to be wiser than my brain? I’m dying because we were imaginative beyond bounds.”
“Listen, what’s happening to you has no connection with our Plan.”
“It doesn’t? Then explain what’s happening to you. The world is behaving like my cells.”
He sank back, exhausted. The doctor came in and whispered to Belbo that it was