Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [71]
He paused for our reaction.
Belbo disappointed him. “Who?”
“Rakosky. The Rakosky! The authority on traditional studies, the former editor of Les Cahiers du Mysterel”
“Oh, that Rakosky,” Belbo said. “Yes, yes, of course...”
“Before writing the final version of my book, I’ll wait to hear this gentleman’s advice. But I wanted to move as quickly as possible, and if I could come to an agreement with your firm in the meantime...As I said, I am eager to stir up reactions, to collect new information...There are people who surely know but won’t speak...Around 1944, gentlemen, though he knew the war was lost, Hitler began talking about a secret weapon that would allow him to turn the situation around. He was crazy, people said. But what if he wasn’t crazy? You follow me?” His forehead was bathed in sweat, and his moustache bristled like a feline’s whiskers. “In any event,” he said, “I’m casting the bait. We’ll see if anyone bites.”
From what I knew and thought of Belbo then, I expected him to show the colonel out with some polite words. But he didn’t. “Listen, Colonel,” he said, “this is enormously interesting, regardless of whether you sign a contract with us or with someone else. Do you think you could spare another ten minutes or so?” He turned to me. “It’s late, Casaubon, and I’ve kept you too long already. Can we meet tomorrow?”
I was being dismissed. Diotallevi took my arm and said he was leaving, too. We said good-bye. The colonel shook Diotallevi’s hand warmly and gave me a nod accompanied by a chilly smile.
As we were going down the stairs, Diotallevi said to me: “You’re probably wondering why Belbo asked you to leave. Don’t think he was being rude. He’s going to make the colonel an offer. It’s a delicate matter. Delicate, by order of Signer Gar-amond. Our presence would be an embarrassment.”
As I learned later, Belbo meant to cast the colonel into the maw of Manutius.
I dragged Diotallevi to Pilade’s, where I had a Campari and he a root beer. Root beer, he said, had a monkish, archaic taste, almost Templar.
I asked him what he thought of the colonel.
“All the world’s follies,”he replied, “turn up in publishing houses sooner or later. But the world’s follies may also contain flashes of the wisdom of the Most High, so the wise man observes folly with humility.” Then he excused himself; he had to go. “This evening, a feast awaits me,” he said.
“A party?”
He seemed dismayed by my frivolity. “The Zohar,” he explained. “Lekh Lekha. Passages still completely misunderstood.”
21
The Graal...is a weight so heavy that creatures in the bondage of sin are unable to move it from its place.
—Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, IX, 477
I hadn’t taken to the colonel, yet he had piqued my interest. You can be fascinated even by a tree frog if you watch it long enough. I was savoring the first drops of the poison that would carry us all to perdition.
I went back to see Belbo the following afternoon, and we talked a little about our visitor. Belbo said the man had seemed a mythomaniac to him. “Did you notice how he quoted that Rakosky, or Rostropovich, as if the man were Kant?”
“But these are typical old tales,” I said. “Ingolf was a lunatic who believed them, and the colonel is a lunatic who believes Ingolf.”
“Maybe he believed him yesterday and today he believes something else. Before he left, I arranged an appointment for him with—well, with another publisher, a firm that’s not choosy and brings out books financed by the authors themselves. He seemed enthusiastic. But I just learned that he didn’t show up. And—imagine—he even left the photocopy of that message here. Look. He leaves the secret of the Templars around as if