Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [49]
“I think it’s the same one. A third eye is then supposed to open up in the brow, the eye that lets you see directly into time and space. This is why people are still seeking the secret of the Templars.”
“Philip the Fair should have burned the modern esotericists instead of those poor bastards.”
“Yes, except that the modern esotericists don’t have two pennies to rub together.”
“Now you see the kind of stories we have to listen to!” Belbo concluded. “At least I understand why so many of my lunatics are obsessed with these Templars.”
“It’s a little like what you were saying the other day. The whole thing is a twisted syllogism. Act like a lunatic and you will be inscrutable forever. Abracadabra, Manel Tekel Phares, Pape Satan Pape Satan Aleppe, le vierge le vivace et le bel au-jourd’hui. Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message. The Templars’ mental confusion makes them indecipherable. That’s why so many people venerate them.”
“A positivist explanation,” Diotallevi said.
“Yes,” I agreed, “maybe I am a positivist. A little surgery on the pineal gland might have turned the Templars into Hospitalers; normal people, in other words. War somehow damages the cerebral circuitry. Maybe it’s the sound of the cannon, or the Greek fire. Look at our generals.”
It was one o’clock. Diotallevi, drunk on tonic water, was clearly unsteady. We all said good night. I had enjoyed myself. So had they. We didn’t yet know that we had begun to play with fire—Greek fire, the kind that burns and destroys.
15
Erard de Siverey said to me: “My lord, if you think that neither I nor my heirs will incur reproach for it, I will go and fetch you help from the Comte d’Anjou, whom I see in the fields over there.” I said to him: “My dear man, it seems to me you would win great honor for yourself if you went for help to save our lives. Your own, by the way, is also in great danger.”
—Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, 46, 226
After that evening of the Templars, I had only fleeting conversations with Belbo at Pilade’s, where I went less and less often because I was working on my thesis.
One day there was a big march against fascist conspiracies. It was to start at the university, and all the left-wing intellectuals had been invited to take part. Magnificent, police presence, but apparently the tacit understanding was to let things take their course. Typical of those days: the demonstration had no permit, but if nothing serious happened, the police would just watch, making sure the marchers didn’t transgress any of the unwritten boundaries drawn through downtown Milan (there were a lot of territorial compromises back then). The protesters operated in an area beyond Largo Augusto; the fascists were entrenched in Piazza San Babila and its neighboring streets. If anybody crossed the line, there were incidents; otherwise nothing happened. It was like a lion and a lion tamer. We usually believe that the tamer is attacked by the lion and that the tamer stops the attack by raising his whip or firing a blank. Wrong: the lion was fed and sedated before it entered the cage and doesn’t feel like attacking anybody. Like all animals, it has its own space; if you don’t invade that space, the lion remains calm. When the tamer steps forward, invading it, the lion roars; the tamer then raises his whip, but also takes a step backward (as if in expectation of a charge), whereupon the lion calms down. A simulated revolution must also have its rules.
I went to the demonstration but didn’t march with any of the groups. Instead, I stood at the edge of Piazza Santo Stefano, where reporters, editors, and artists who had come to show their solidarity were milling around. The whole clientele of Pilade’s.
I found myself standing next to Belbo and a woman I had often seen him with at the bar, who I thought was his companion. (She later disappeared—and now I know why, having read about it in the file on Dr. Wagner.)
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“You know how it is,” he said,