Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [34]
He left. “Don’t pay any attention,” Belbo said. “We have this argument almost every day. The fact is, Diotallevi is a devotee of the cabala. But there were also Christian cabalists. Anyway, if Diotallevi wants to be Jewish, why should I object?”
“Why indeed. We’re all liberals here.”
“So we are.”
He lit a cigarette. I remembered why I had come. “You mentioned a manuscript about the Templars,” I said.
“That’s right...Let’s see. It was in a fake-leather folder...”He tried to pick a manuscript out of the middle of a pile without disturbing the others. A hazardous operation. Part of the pile fell to the floor. Now Belbo was holding the fake-leather folder.
I looked at the table of contents and the introduction. “It deals with the arrest of the Templars,” I said. “In 1307, Philip the Fair decided to arrest all the Templars in France. There’s a legend that two days before Philip issued the arrest warrant, the ox-drawn hay wain left the enclave of the Temple in Paris for an
unknown destination. They say that hidden in the wain was a group of knights led by one Aumont. These knights supposedly escaped, took refuge in Scotland, and joined a Masonic lodge in Kilwinning. According to the legend, they became part of the society of Freemasons, who served as guardians of the secrets of the Temple of Solomon. Ah, here we are; I thought so. This writer, too, claims that the origins of Masonry lie in the Templars’ escape to Scotland. A story that’s been rehashed for a couple of centuries, with no foundation to it. I can give you at least fifty pamphlets that tell the same tale, each cribbed from the other. Here, listen to this—just a page picked at random: ‘The proof of the Scottish expedition lies in the fact that even today, six hundred and fifty years later, there still exist in the world secret orders that hark back to the Temple Militia. How else is one to explain the continuity of this heritage?’ You see what I mean? How can the Marquis de Carabas not exist when Puss in Boots says he’s in the marquis’s service?”
“All right,” Belbo said, “I’ll throw it out. But this Templar business interests me. For once I have an expert handy, and I don’t want to let him get away. Why is there all this talk about the Templars and nothing about the Knights of Malta? No, don’t tell me now. It’s late. Diotallevi and I have to go to dinner with Signor Garamond in a little while. We should be through by about ten-thirty. I’ll try to persuade Diotallevi to drop by Pi-lade’s—he goes to bed early and usually doesn’t drink. Will you be there?”
“Where else? I belong to a lost generation and am comfortable only in the company of others who are lost and lonely.’’
13
Li frere, li mestre du Temple
Qu’estoient rempli et ample
D’or et d’argent et de richesse
Et qui menoient tel noblesse,
Ou sont ils? que sont devenu?
—Chronique a la suite du roman de Favel
Et in Arcadia ego. That evening Pilade’s was the image of the golden age. One of those evenings when you feel that not only will there definitely be a revolution, but that the Association of Manufacturers will foot the bill for it. Where but at Pilade’s could you watch the bearded owner of a cotton mill, wearing a parka, play hearts with a future fugitive from justice dressed in a double-breasted jacket and tie? This was the dawn of great changes in style. Until the beginning of the sixties, beards were fascist, and you had to trim them, and shave your cheeks, in the style of Italo Balbo; but by ‘68 beards meant protest, and now they were becoming neutral, universal, a matter of personal preference. Beards have always been masks (you wear a fake beard to keep from being recognized), but in those years, the early seventies, a real beard was also a disguise. You could lie while telling the truth—or, rather, by making the truth elusive and enigmatic. A man’s politics could no longer be guessed from his beard. That evening, beards seemed to hover on clean-shaven faces whose very lack of hair suggested defiance.
I digress. Belbo