Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [276]
From the fuselage of Breguet’s plane, a fifth Derviche leaned out like a muezzin from a minaret and began to chant in an unknown tongue, moaning and lamenting as the drums began again, increasing in intensity.
Crouched behind the Brothers Fox, Madame Olcott whispered words of encouragement to them. The three were slumped in their chairs, their hands clutching the arms, their eyes closed. They began to sweat, and all the muscles of their faces twitched.
Madame Olcott addressed the assembly of dignitaries. “My excellent little brothers will now bring into our midst three people who knew.” She paused, then said: “Edward Kelley, Heinrich Khunrath, and...” Another pause. “Comte de Saint-Germain.”
For the first time, I saw Aglie make a wrong move. Out of control, he sprang from his seat, flung himself toward the woman, narrowly avoiding the trajectory of the Pendulum, as he cried: “Viper, liar, you know that cannot be....” Then, to the nave: “It’s an imposture! A lie! Stop her!”
But no one moved except Pierre, who went up and sat on the throne. “Proceed, madame,” he said.
Aglie, recovering his sangfroid, stood aside, mingling with the others. “Very well,” he challenged. “Let’s see, then.”
Madame Olcott moved her arm as if signaling the start of a race. The music grew shrill, dissonant; the drumbeats lost their steady rhythm; the dancers, who had already begun swaying back and forth, right and left, as they squatted, got up now, threw off their cloaks, and held out their arms wide, rigid, as if they were about to take flight. A moment of immobility, and they began to spin in place, using the left foot as a pivot, faces upraised, concentrated, vacant, and their pleated tunics belled out as they pirouetted, making them look like flowers caught in a hurricane.
Meanwhile, the mediums, breathing hoarsely, seemed to knot up, their faces distorted, as if they were straining, unsuccessfully, to defecate. The light of the brazier dimmed. Madame Olcott’s acolytes turned off the lanterns on the floor, and now the church was illuminated only by the glow from the nave.
And the miracle began to take place. From Theo Fox’s lips a whitish foam trickled, a foam that seemed to thicken. A similar substance issued from the lips of his brothers.
“Come, brothers,” Madame Olcott murmured, coaxed, “come, come. That’s right, yes....”
The dancers sang brokenly, hysterically, they shook and bobbed their heads, they shouted, men made convulsive noises, like death rattles.
The stuff emitted by the mediums took on body, grew more substantial; it was like a lava of albumin, which slowly expanded and descended, slid over their shoulders, their chests, their legs with the sinuous movement of a reptile. I could not tell now if it came from the pores of their skin or their mouths, ears, and eyes. The crowd pressed forward, pushing closer and closer to the mediums and the dancers. I lost all fear: confident that I would not be noticed among them, I stepped from the sentry box, exposing myself still more to the fumes that spread and curled beneath the vaults.
Around the mediums, a milky luminescence. The foam began to detach itself from them, to assume ameboid shape. From the mass that came from one of the mediums, a tip broke free, turned, and moved up along his body, like an animal that intended to strike him with its beak. At the end of it, two mobile knobs formed, like the horns of a giant snail...
The dancers, eyes closed, mouths frothing, did not cease their spinning, and they began to revolve, as much as the space allowed, around the Pendulum, miraculously doing this without crossing its trajectory. Whirling faster and faster, they flung off their fezes, let their long black hair stream out, and it seemed their heads were flying from their necks. They shouted, like the dancers that evening in Rio: Houu houu houuuuu...
The white forms acquired definition: one of them grew vaguely human in appearance, another went from phallus to ampule to alembic, and the third was clearly taking