Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [286]
I looked up. The Tower was endless, like the Plan for which it had been born. If I could remain there without being devoured, I would be able to follow the shifts, the slow revolutions, the infinitesimal decompositions and recompositions in the chill of the currents. Perhaps the Masters of the World knew how to interpret it as a geomantic design, perhaps in its metamorphoses they knew how to read their instructions, their unconfessable mandates. The Tower spun above my head, screwdriver of the Mystic Pole. Or else it was immobile, like a magnetized pin, and it made the heavenly vault rotate. The vertigo was the same. How well the Tower defends itself! I said silently. From the distance it winks affectionately, but should you approach, should you attempt to penetrate its mystery, it will kill you, it will freeze your bones, simply by revealing the meaningless horror of which it is made. Now I know that Belbo is dead, and the Plan is real, because the Tower is real. If I don’t get away now, fleeing once again, I won’t be able to tell anyone. I must sound the alarm.
A noise. Stop, return to reality. A taxi bearing down. With a leap I managed to tear myself from the magic girdle, I waved my arms, and was almost run OjVer, because the driver braked only at the last moment, stopping as if with great reluctance. During the ride he explained mat he, too, when he passed beneath it at night, found the Tower frightening, so he speeded up. “Why?” I asked him.
“Parce que... parce que ca fait peur, c’est tout.”
At my hotel, I had to ring and ring before the sleepy night porter came. I said to myself: You have to sleep now. The rest, tomorrow. I took some pills, enough to poison myself. Then I don’t remember.
117
Madness has an enormous pavilion Where it receives folk from every region, Especially if they have gold in profusion.
—Sebastian Brant, Das Narrenschiff, 1494, 46
I woke at two in the afternoon, dazed, catatonic. I remembered everything clearly, but didn’t know if what I remembered was true. My first thought was to run downstairs and buy the newspapers; then I told myself that even if a company of spahis had stormed the Conservatoire immediately after the event, the news wouldn’t have had time to appear in the morning papers.
Besides, Paris had other things on its mind that day. The desk clerk informed me as soon as I went down to look for some coffee. The city was in an uproar. Many Me’tro stations were closed; in some places the police were using force to disperse the crowds; the students were too numerous, they were going too far.
I found Dr. Wagner’s number in the telephone book. I tried calling, but his office was obviously closed on Sunday. Anyway, I had to go and check at the Conservatoire. It was open on Sunday afternoons.
In the Latin Quarter groups of people were shouting and waving flags. On the He de la Cite I saw a police barricade. Shots could be heard in the distance. This is how it must have been in ‘68. At Sainte-Chapelle there must have been a confrontation, I caught a whiff of tear gas. I heard people charging, I didn’t know if they were students or policemen; everybody around me was running. Some of us took refuge inside a fence behind a cordon of police, while there was some scuffling in the street. The shame of it: here I was with the aging bourgeoisie, waiting for the revolution to subside.
Then the way was clear, and I took back streets around the old Halles, until I was again in rue Saint-Martin. The Conservatoire was open, with its white forecourt, the plague on the facade: “Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, established by decree of the Convention on 19 Vendemiaire, Year III...in the former priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, founded in the eleventh century.” Everything normal, with a little Sunday crowd ignoring the students’ kermesse.
I went inside—Sundays free—and everything was as it had been at five o’clock yesterday afternoon. The guards, the visitors, the Pendulum in its usual place...I looked for