Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [279]
Belbo didn’t answer. He looked away, as if politely to avoid overhearing a conversation he had chanced upon.
Aglie insisted, conciliatory, paternal: “I understand your irritation, your reserve. How it must revolt you to confide an intimate and precious secret to a rabble that has just offered such an unedifying spectacle! Very well, you may confide your secret to me alone, whispering it in my ear. Now I will have you taken down, and I know you will tell me a word, a single word.”
Belbo said: “You think so?”
Then Aglie changed his tone. I saw him imperious as never before, sacerdotal, hieratic. He spoke as if he had on one of the Egyptian vestments worn by his colleagues. But the note was false; he seemed to be parodying those whom he had always treated with indulgent commiseration. At the same time, he spoke with the full assumption of his authority. For some purpose of his own—because this couldn’t have been unintentional—he was introducing an element of melodrama. If he was acting, he acted well: Belbo seemed unaware of any deception, listening to Aglie as if he had expected nothing else from him.
“Now you will speak,” Aglie said. “You will speak, and you will join this great game. If you remain silent, you are lost. If you speak, you will share in the victory. For truly I say this to you: this night you and I and all of us are in Hod, the Sefirah of splendor, majesty, and glory; Hod, which governs ritual and ceremonial magic; Hod, the moment when the curtain of eternity is parted. I have dreamed of this moment for centuries. You will speak, and you will join the only ones who will be entitled, after your revelation, to declare themselves Masters of the World. Humble yourself, and you will be exalted. You will speak because I order you to speak, and my words efficiunt quod figurant!”
And Belbo, now invincible, said, “Ma gavte la nata...”
Aglie, even if he was expecting a refusal, blanched at the insult.
“What did he say?” Pierre asked, hysterical.
“He will not speak,” Aglie roughly translated. He lifted his arms in a gesture of surrender, of obedience, and said to Bra-manti: “ He is yours.’’
And Pierre said, transported: “Assez, assez, le sacrifice hu-main, le sacrifice humain!”
“Yes, let him die. We’ll find the answer anyway,” cried Madame Olcott, equally carried away, as she now returned to the scene, rushing toward Belbo.
At the same time, Lorenza moved. She freed herself from the giants’ grasp and stood before Belbo, at the foot of the gallows, her arms opened wide, as if to stop an invading army. In tears, she exclaimed: “Are you all crazy? You can’t do this!”
Aglie, who was withdrawing, stood rooted to the spot for a moment, then ran to her, to restrain her.
What happened next took only seconds. Madame Olcott’s knot of hair came undone; all rancor and flames, like a Medusa, she bared her talons, scratched at Aglie’s face, shoved him aside with the force of the momentum of her leap. Aglie fell back, stumbled over a leg of the brazier, spun around like a dervish, and banged his head against a machine; he sank to the ground, his face covered with blood. Pierre, meanwhile, flung himself on Lorenza, drawing the dagger from the sheath on his chest as he moved, but he blocked my view, so I didn’t see what happened. Then I saw Lorenza slumped at Belbo’s feet, her face waxen, and Pierre, holding up the red blade, shouted: “Enfin, le sacrifice humain!” Turning toward the nave, he said in a loud voice: “I’a Cthulhu! I’a S’ha-t’n!”
In a body, the horde in the nave moved forward: some fell and were swept aside; others, pushing, threatened to topple Cug-not’s car. I heard—I must have heard it, I can’t have imagined such a grotesque detail—the voice of Garamond saying: “Gentlemen, please! Manners!...” Bramanti, in ecstasy, was kneeling by Lorenza’s body, declaiming: “Asar, Asar! Who is clutching me by the throat? Who is