Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [282]
115
If the eye could see the demons that people the universe, existence would be impossible.
—Talmud, Berakhot, 6
Leaving the bar, I find myself among the lights of Porte Saint-Martin. The bar is Arab, and the shops around it, still open, are Arab, too. A composite odor of couscous and falafel, and crowd. Clumps of young people, thin, many with sleeping bags. I ask a boy what is going on. The march, he says. Tomorrow there will be a big march against the Savary law. Marchers are arriving by the busload. A Turk—a Druze, an Ismaili in disguise—invites me in bad French to go into some kind of club. Never. Flee Alamut. You do not know who is in the service of whom. Trust no one.
I cross the intersection. Now I hear only the sound of my footsteps. The advantage of a big city: move on a few meters, and you find solitude again.
Suddenly, after a few blocks, on my left, the Conservatoire, pale in the night. From the outside, perfect peace, a monument sleeping the sleep of the just. I continue southward, toward the Seine. I have a destination, but I’m not sure what it is. I want to ask someone what has happened.
Belbo dead? The sky is serene. I encounter a group of students. They are silent, influenced by the genius loci. On the left, the hulk of Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs.
I continue along rue Saint-Martin, I cross rue aux Ours, broad, a boulevard, almost; I’m afraid of losing my way, but what way? Where am I going? I don’t know. I look around, and on my right, at the comer, I see two display windows of Editions Ros-icruciennes. They’re dark, but in the light of the street lamp and with the help of my flashlight I manage to make out their contents. Books, objects, Histoire desjuifs, Comte de St.-Germain, alchemy, monde cache, les maisons secretes de la Rose-Croix, the message of the builders of the cathedrals, the Cathars, The New Atlantis, Egyptian medicine, the temple of Karnak, the Bhagavad-Gita, reincarnation, Rosicrucian crosses and candelabra, busts of Iris and Osiris, incense in boxes and tablets, tarots. A dagger, a tin letter opener with a round hilt bearing the seal of the Rosicrucians. What are they doing, making fun of me?
I pass the facade of the Beaubourg. During the day the place is a village fair; now the plaza is almost deserted. A few silent groups, sleeping, a few lights from the brasseries opposite. It’s all true. Giant air ducts that absorb energy from the earth. Perhaps the crowds that come during the day serve to supply them with vibrations; perhaps the hermetic machine is fed on fresh meat.
The church of Saint-Merri. Opposite, the Librairie la Vouivre, three-quarters occultist. I must not give in to hysteria. I take rue des Lombards, to avoid an army of Scandinavian girls coming out of a bistro laughing. Shut up; Lorenza is dead.
But is she? What if I am the one who is dead? Rue des Lombards intersects, at right angles, rue Nicolas-Flamel, and at the end of that you can see, white, the Tour Saint-Jacques. At the corner, the Librairie Arcane 22, tarots and pendulums. Nicolas Flamel the alchemist, an alchemistic bookshop, and then the Tour Saint-Jacques, with those great white lions at the base, a useless late-Gothic tower near the Seine, after which an esoteric review was named. Pascal conducted experiments there on the weight of air, and even today, at a height of fifty-two meters, the tower has a station for meteorological research. Maybe They began with the Tour Saint-Jacques, before erecting the Eiffel Tower. There are special locations. And no one notices.
I go back toward Saint-Merri. More girls’ laughter. I don’t want to see people. I skirt the church. Along rue du Cloitre-Saint-Merri, a transept door, old, of rough wood. At the foot of the street, a square extends, the end of the Beaubourg area, here brilliantly lit. In the open space, machines by Tinguely, and other multicolored artifacts that float on