Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [287]
I don’t recall how I spent the rest of the afternoon. Nor do I recall what I saw, wandering the streets, forced every now and then to turn into an alley to avoid a scuffle. I called Milan, just to see, dialed Belbo’s number, then Lorenza’s. Then Garamond Press, which would of course be closed.
As I sit here tonight, all this happened yesterday. But between the day before yesterday and this night an eternity has passed.
Toward evening I realized that I hadn’t eaten anything. I wanted quiet, and a little comfort. Near the Forum des Halles I entered a restaurant that promised fish. There was too much fish. My table was directly opposite an aquarium. A universe sufficiently surreal to plunge me again into paranoia. Nothing is accidental. That fish seems an asthmatic Hesychast that is losing its faith and accusing God of having lessened the meaning of the cosmos. Sabaoth, Sabaoth, how can you be so wicked as to make me believe you don’t exist? The flesh is covering the world like gangrene... That other fish looks like Minnie; she bats her long lashes and purses her lips into a heart shape. Minnie Mouse is Mickey’s fiancee. I eat a salade folle with a haddock tender as a baby’s flesh. With honey and pepper. The Paulicians are here. That one glides among the coral like Breguet’s airplane, a leisurely lepidopteral fluttering of wings; a hundred to one he saw his homunculus abandoned at the bottom of an athanor, now with a hole in it, thrown into the garbage opposite Flamel’s house. And now a Templar fish, all armored in black, looking for Noffo Dei. He grazes the asthmatic Hesychast, who navigates pensively, frowning, toward the Unspeakable. I look away. Across the street I glimpse the sign of another restaurant, Chez R... Rosie Cross? Reuchlin? Rosispergius? Rachkov-skyragotgkyzarogi? Signatures, signatures...
Let’s see. The only way to discomfit the Devil is to make him believe you don’t believe in him. There’s no mystery in your nighttime flight across Paris, in your vision of the Tower. To come out of the Conservatoire after what you saw, or believe you saw, and to experience the city as a nightmare—that is normal. But what did I see in the Conservatoire?
I absolutely had to talk to Dr. Wagner. I don’t know why, but I had to. Talking was the panacea. The therapy of the word.
How did I pass the time till this morning? I went into a movie theater where they were showing Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai. When the scene with the mirrors came, it was too much for me, and I left. But maybe that’s not true, maybe I imagined the whole thing.
This morning I called Dr. Wagner at nine. The name Garamond enabled me to get past the secretary; the doctor seemed to remember me, and, impressed by the urgency in my voice, he said to come at once, at nine-thirty, before his regular appointments. He seemed cordial, sympathetic.
Did I dream the visit to Dr. Wagner, too? The secretary asked for my vital statistics, prepared a card, had me pay in advance. Luckily I had my return ticket.
An office of modest size, with no couch. Windows overlooking the Seine. To the left, the shadow of the Tower. Dr. Wagner received me with professional affability. I was not his publisher now, I was his patient. With a wide gesture he had me sit opposite him, at his desk, like a government clerk called on the carpet. “Et alors?” He said this, and gave his rotating chair a push, turning his back to me. He sat with his head bowed and hands clasped. There was nothing left but for me to speak.
I spoke, and it was like a dam bursting; everything came out, from beginning to end: what I thought two years ago, what I thought last year, what •! thought Belbo had thought, and Dio-tallevi. Above all, what had happened on Saint John’s Eve.
Wagner did not interrupt once, did not nod or show disap- . proval. For all the response he made, he could have been fast asleep. But that must have been his technique. I talked and talked. The therapy of the word.
Then