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By Root 715 0

Bricco’s slopes are rows and rows of vines. I know them, I have seen similar rows in my day. No doctrine of numbers can say if they are in ascending or descending order. In the midst of the rows—but you have to walk barefoot, with your heels callused, from childhood—there are peach trees. Yellow peaches that grow only between rows of vines. You can split a peach with the pressure of your thumb; the pit comes out almost whole, as clean as if it had been chemically treated, except for an occasional bit of pulp, white, tiny, clinging there like a worm. When you eat the peach, the velvet of the skin makes shudders run from your tongue to your groin. Dinosaurs once grazed here. Then another surface covered theirs. And yet, like Belbo when he played the trumpet, when I bit into the peach I understood the Kingdom and was one with it. The rest is only cleverness. Invent; invent the Plan, Casaubon. That’s what everyone has done, to explain the dinosaurs and the peaches.

I have understood. And the certainty that there is nothing to understand should be my peace, my triumph. But I am here, and They are looking for me, thinking I possess the revelation They sordidly desire. It isn’t enough to have understood, if others refuse and continue to interrogate. They are looking for me, They must have picked up my trail in Paris, They know I am here now, They still want the Map. And when I tell Them that there is no Map, They will want it all the more. Belbo was right. Fuck you, fool! You want to kill me? Kill me, then, but I won’t tell you there’s no Map. If you can’t figure it out for yourself, tough shit.

It hurts me to think I won’t see Lia again, and the baby, the Thing, Giulio, my philosopher’s stone. But stones survive on their own. Maybe even now he is experiencing his Opportunity. He’s found a ball, an ant, a blade of grass, and in it he sees paradise and the abyss. He, too, will know it too late. He will be good; never mind, let him spend his day like this, alone.

Damn. It hurts all the same. Patience. When I’m dead, it won’t hurt.

It’s very late. I left Paris this morning, I left too many clues. They’ve had time to guess where I am. In a little while, They’ll be here. I would have liked to write down everything I thought today. But if They were to read it, They would only derive another dark theory and spend another eternity trying to decipher the secret message hidden behind my words. It’s impossible, They would say; he can’t only have been making fun of us. No. Perhaps, without his realizing it, Being was sending us a message through its oblivion.

It makes no difference whether I write or not. They will look for other meanings, even in my silence. That’s how They are. Blind to revelation. Malkhut is Malkhut, and that’s that.

But try telling Them. They of little faith.

So I might as well stay here, wait, and look at the hill. It’s so beautiful.

About the Author

Umberto Eco was born in 1932 in Alessandria, Italy. He is professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna, a philosopher, historian, literary critic, and aesthetician. The subjects of his scholarly investigation range from St. Thomas Aquinas to James Joyce to Superman. He lives in Milan.

Table of Contents

KETER

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2

HOKHMAH

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BINAH

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HESED

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GEVURAH

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