Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [268]
It was past noon, and that evening something would take place in the Conservatoire. What was I to do? I turned into rue Saint-Jacques, every now and then looking over my shoulder. An Arab seemed to be following me. But what made me think he was an Arab? The thing about Arabs is that they don’t look like Arabs, or at least not in Paris. In Stockholm it would be different.
I passed a hotel, went in, asked for a room, got a key. As I was going upstairs, wooden stairs with a railing, from the second-floor landing the desk was still visible and I saw the presumed Arab enter. Then I noticed that in the corridor there were other people who could have been Arabs. Of course, that neighborhood was full of little hotels for Arabs. What did I expect?
I went into the room. It was decent; there was even a telephone. Too bad I didn’t know anyone I could call.
I dozed fitfully until three. Then I washed my face and headed for the Conservatoire. Now there was nothing else for me to do but enter the museum, stay on after closing, and wait for midnight.
Which I did. And a few hours before midnight, I found myself in the periscope, waiting.
Nezah, for some interpreters, is the Sefirah of endurance, forbearance, constant patience. In fact, a test lay ahead of us. But for other interpreters, it is victory. Whose victory? Perhaps, in this story full of the defeated, of the Diabolicals mocked by Belbo, of Belbo mocked by the Diabolicals, of Diotallevi mocked by his cells, I was—for the moment—the only victorious one. Lying in wait in the periscope, I knew about the others, but the others didn’t know about me. The first part of my scheme had gone according to plan.
And the second? Would it, too, go according to plan, or would it go according to the Plan, which now was no longer mine?
HOD
112
Four our Ordinances and Rites: We have two very long and faire Galleries in the Temple of the Rosie Cross; In one of these we place patterns and samples of all manners of the more rare and excellent inventions; In the other we place the Statues of all principal Inventours.
—John Heydon, The English Physitians Guide: Or A Holy Guide, London, Ferns, 1662, The Preface
I had stayed in the periscope too long. It must have been ten, ten-thirty. If something was going to happen, it would happen in the nave, before the Pendulum. I had to go down there and find a hiding place, an observation post. If I arrived too late, after They entered (from where?), They would notice me.
Go downstairs. Move... For hours I had waited for this, but now that it was possible, even wise, to do it, I felt somehow paralyzed. I would have to cross the rooms at night, using my flashlight only when necessary. The barest hint of a nocturnal glow filtered through the big windows. I had imagined a museum made ghostly by the moon’s rays; I was wrong. The glass cases reflected vague glints from outside; that was all. If I didn’t move carefully, I could go sprawling on the floor, could knock over something with a shatter of glass, a clang of metal. Now and then I turned on the flashlight, turned it off. Proceeding, I felt as if I were at the Crazy Horse. The sudden beam revealed a nakedness, not of flesh, but of screws, clamps, rivets.
What if I were suddenly to reveal a living presence, the figure of an envoy of the Masters echoing, mirroring my progress? Who would be the first to shout? I listened. In vain. Gliding, I made no noise. Neither did he.
That afternoon I had studied carefully the sequence of the rooms, in order to be able to find the great staircase even in the darkness. But instead I was wandering, groping. I had lost my bearings.
Perhaps I was going in circles, crossing some of the rooms for the second time; perhaps I would never get out of this place; perhaps this groping among meaningless machines was the rite.
The truth was, I didn’t want to go down. I wanted to postpone the