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By Root 902 0

the surface of a pool, a small artificial lake, their cogged wheels clanking insinuatingly. In the background I see again the scaffolding of Dalmine pipes, the Beaubourg with its gaping mouths—like an abandoned 71-tanic near a wall devoured by ivy, a shipwreck in a crater of the moon. Where the cathedrals failed, the great transatlantic ducts whisper, in contact with the Black Virgins. They are discovered only by one who knows how to circumnavigate Saint-Merri. And so I must go on; I have a clue, I must expose Their plot in the very center of the Ville Lumiere, the plot of the Dark Ones.

I find myself at the facade of Saint-Merri. Something impels me to train my flashlight on the portal. Flamboyant Gothic, arches in accolade.

And suddenly, finding what I didn’t expect to find, on the archivolt of the portal I see it.

The Baphomet. Where two curves join. At the summit of the first, a dove of the Holy Spirit with a glory of stone rays, but on the second, besieged by praying angels, there he is, the Baphomet, with his awful wings. On the facade of a church. Shameless.

Why here? Because we aren’t far from the Temple. Where is the Temple, or what’s left of it? I retrace my steps, north, and find myself at the corner of rue de Montmorency. At number 51, the house of Nicolas Flamel. Between the Baphomet and the Temple. The shrewd spagyric knew well with whom he was dealing. Poubelles full of foul rubbish opposite a house of undefined period, Taverne Nicolas Flamel. The house is old, restored for the tourists, for Diabolicals of the lowest order, hylics. Next door, an American shop with an Apple poster: “Secouez-vous les puces.” Microsoft-Hermes. Directory, temurah.

Now I’m in rue du Temple, I walk along it and come to the corner of rue de Bretagne, and the Square du Temple, a garden blanched as a cemetery, the necropolis of the martyred knights.

Rue de Bretagne to rue Vieille du Temple. Rue Vieille du Temple, after rue Barbette, has novelty shops: electric bulbs in odd shapes, Jike ducks or ivy leaves. Too blatantly modern. They don’t fool me.

Rue des Francs-Bourgeois: I’m in the Marais, I know, and soon the old kosher butcher shops will appear. What do the Jews have to do with the Templars, now that we gave their place in the Plan to the Assassins of Alamut? Why am I here? Is it an answer I am looking for? Perhaps I’m only trying to get away from the Conservatoire. Unless I do have a destination, a place I’m going to. But it can’t be here. I rack my brain to remember where it is, as Belbo hunted in a dream for a lost address.

An obscene group approaches. Laughing nastily, they march in open order, forcing me to step off the sidewalk. For a moment I fear they are agents of the Old Man of the Mountain, that they have come for me. Not so; they vanish into the night, but they speak a foreign language, a sibilant Shiite, Talmudic, Coptic, like a serpent of the desert.

Androgynous figures loom, in long cloaks. Rosicrucian cloaks. They pass, turn into rue de Sevigne. It is late, very late. I fled the Conservatoire to find again the city of all, but now I realize that the city of all is a catacomb with special paths for the initiated.

A drunk. But he may be pretending. Trust no one, no one. I pass a still-open bar; the waiters, in aprons down to their ankles, are putting chairs on tables. I manage to enter just in time. I order a beer, drain it, ask for another. “A healthy thirst, eh?” one of them says. But without cordiality, suspicious. Of course I’m thirsty; I’ve had nothing to drink since five yesterday afternoon. A man can be thirsty without having spent the night under a pendulum. Fools. I pay and leave before they can commit my features to memory.

I’m at the corner of Place des Vosges. I walk along the arcades. What was that old movie in which the solitary footsteps of Mathias, the mad killer, echoed at night in Place des Vosges? I stop. Do I hear footsteps behind me? But I wouldn’t, of course; the killer has stopped, too. These arcades—all they need is a few glass cases, and they could be rooms in the Conservatoire.