Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [7]
Near a window in the right-hand corner, I noticed the sentry box of the periscope. I entered it and found myself facing a glass plate, as on the bridge of a ship, and through it I saw shifting images of a film, blurred; a scene of a city. What I saw was projected from a screen above my head, where everything was upside down, and this second screen was the eyepiece, as it were, of a primitive periscope made of two packing cases arranged in an obtuse angle. The longer case stuck out like a pipe from the cubicle above and behind me, reaching a higher window, from which a set of wide-angle lenses gathered the light from outside. Calculating the route I had followed, coming up here, I realized that the periscope gave me a view of the outside as if I were looking through a window in the upper part of the apse of Saint-Martin—as if I were swaying there with the Pendulum, like a hanged man, taking his last look. After my eyes adjusted to the pale scene, I could make out rue Vaucanson, which the choir overlooked, and rue Conte, on a line with the nave. Rue Conte split into rue Montgolfier to the left and rue de 1\irbigo to the right. There were a couple of bars at the corners, Le Weekend and La Rotonde, and opposite them a fa?ade with a sign that I could just barely discern: LES CREATIONS JACSAM.
The periscope. There was no real reason it should be in the hall of glass rather than in the hall of optical instruments, but obviously it was important for this particular view of the outside to be in this particular place. But important how? Why should this cubicle, so positivist-scientific, a thing out of Verne, stand beside the emblematic lion and serpent?
In any case, if I had the strength and the courage to stay here for another half hour or so, the night watchman might not see me.
And so I remained underwater for what seemed a very long time. I heard the footsteps of the last of the visitors, then the footsteps of the last guards. I was tempted to crouch under the bridge to elude a possible random glance inside, but decided against it. If they discovered me standing, I could pretend I was an enthusiast who had lingered to enjoy the marvel.
Later, the lights went out, and the hall was shrouded in semi-darkness. But the cubicle seemed less dark now, illuminated as it was by the screen. I stared steadily at it, my last contact with the world.
The best course was to stay on my feet—if my feet ached too much, then in a crouch, for at least two hours. Closing time for visitors was not the same as quitting time for the employees. I was seized by sudden fear: Suppose the cleaning staff started going through all the rooms, inch by inch. But then I remembered: the museum opened late in the morning, so the cleaners probably worked by daylight and not in the evening. And that must have been the case, at least in the upper rooms, because I heard no one else pass by, only distant voices and an occasional louder sound, perhaps of doors closing. I stood still. There would be plenty of time for me to get back to the church between ten and eleven, or even later. The Masters would not come until close to midnight.
A group of young people emerged from La Rotonde. A girl walked along rue Conte and turned into rue Montgolfier. Not a very busy neighborhood. Would I be able to hold out, watching the humdrum world behind my back for hours on end? Shouldn’t I try to guess the secret of the periscope’s location here? I felt the need to urinate. Ignore it: a nervous reaction.
So many things run through your mind when you’re hiding alone inside a periscope. This must be how a stowaway feels, concealed in a ship’s hold, emigrating to some far-off land. To the Statue