Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [78]
It was also the day I began to let myself be lulled by feelings of resemblance: the notion that everything might be mysteriously related to everything else.
Later, when I returned to Europe, I converted this metaphysics into mechanics—and thus fell into the trap in which I now lie. But back then I was living in a twilight that blurred all distinctions. Like a racist, I believed that a strong man could regard the faiths of others as an opportunity for harmless daydreaming and no more.
I learned some rhythms, ways of letting go with body and mind. Recalling them the other evening in the periscope, to fight off growing numbness I moved my limbs as if I were once again striking the agogd. You see? I said to myself. To escape the power of the unknown, to prove to yourself that you don’t believe in it, you accept its spells. Like an avowed atheist who sees the Devil at night, you reason: He certainly doesn’t exist; this is therefore an illusion, perhaps a result of indigestion. But the Devil is sure that he exists, and believes in his upside-down theology. What, then, will frighten him? You make the sign of the cross, and he vanishes in a puff of brimstone.
What happened to me was like what might happen to a pedantic ethnologist who has spent years studying cannibalism. He challenges the smugness of the whites by assuring everybody that actually human flesh is delicious. Then one day a doubter decides to see for himself and performs the experiment—on him. As the ethnologist is devoured piece by piece, he hopes, for he will never know who was right, that at least he is delicious, which will justify the ritual and his death. The other evening I had to believe the Plan was true, because if it wasn’t, then I had spent the past two years as the omnipotent architect of an evil dream. Better reality than a dream: if something is real, then it’s real and you’re not to blame.
24
Sauvez la faible Aischa des vertiges de Nahash, sauvez la plaintive Heva des mirages de la sensibility, et que les Khe’rubs me gardent.
—Jose’phin P^ladan, Comment on devient Fee, Paris, Chamuel, 1893, p. XIII
As I was advancing into the forest of resemblances, I received Belbo’s letter.
Dear Casaubon,
I didn’t know until the other day that you were in Brazil. I lost touch completely, not even knowing that you had graduated (congratulations). Anyway, someone at Pilade’s gave me your coordinates, and I thought it would be a good idea to bring you up to date on some developments in that unfortunate Colonel Ardenti business. It’s been more than two years now, I know, and again I must apologize: I was the one who got you into trouble that morning, though I didn’t mean to.
I had almost forgotten the whole nasty story, but two weeks ago I was driving around in the Montefeltro area and happened upon the fortress of San Leo. In the eighteenth century, it seems, the region was under papal rule, and the pope imprisoned Cagliostro there, in a cell with no real door (you entered it, for the first and last time, through a trapdoor in the ceiling) and with one little window from which the prisoner could see only the two churches of the village. I saw a bunch of roses on the shelf where Cagliostro had slept and died, and I was told that many devotees still make the pilgrimage to the place of his martyrdom. Among the most assiduous pilgrims are the members of Picatrix, a group of Milanese students of the occult. It publishes a’ magazine entitled—with great imagination—Picatrix.
You know how curious I am about these oddities. So back in Milan I got hold of a copy of Picatrix, from which I learned that an evocation of the spirit of Cagliostro was to be held in a few days. I went.
The walls were draped with banners covered with cabalistic signs, an abundance of owls of all