Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [8]
The worst would be an anxiety attack. You are certain then that in a moment you will start screaming. Periscope. Submarine. Trapped on the ocean floor. Maybe the great black fish of the abyss are already circling you, unseen, and all you know is that you’re running out of air...
I took several deep breaths. Concentrate. The only thing you can rely on at a time like this is the laundry list. Stick to facts, causes, effects. I am here for this reason, and also for this reason and this...
Memories, distinct, precise, orderly. Of the past three frantic days, of the past two years, and the forty-year-old memories I found when I broke into Jacopo Belbo’s electronic brain.
I am remembering now (as I remembered then) in order to make sense out of the chaos of that misguided creation of ours.
Now (as then, while I waited in the periscope) I shrink into one remote corner of my mind, to draw from it a story. Such as the Pendulum. Diotallevi told me that the first Sefirah is Keter, the Crown, the beginning, the primal void. In the beginning He created a point, which became Thought, where all the figures were drawn. He was and was not, He was encompassed in the name yet not encompassed in the name, having as yet no name other than the desire to be called by a name...He traced signs in the air; a dark light leapt from His most secret depth, like a colorless mist that gives form to formlessness, and as the mist spread, a burst of flames took shape in its center, and the flames streamed down to illuminate the lower Sefirot, and down, down to the Kingdom.
But perhaps in that simsun, that diminishment, that lonely separation—Diotallevi said—there was already the promise of the return.
HOKHMAH
3
In hanc utilitatem clementes angeli saepe figuras, characteres, formas et voces invenerunt proposueruntque nobis mortalibus et ignotas et stupendas nullius rei iuxta consuetum linguae usum significativas, sed per rationis nostrae summam admirationem in assiduam intelligibilium pervestigationem, deinde in illorum ipsorum venerationem et amorem inductivas.
—Johannes Reuchlin, De arte cabalistica, Hagenhau, 1517, III
It had been two days earlier, a Thursday. I was lazing in bed, undecided about getting up. I had arrived the previous afternoon and had telephoned my office. Diotallevi was still in the hospital, and Gudrun sounded pessimistic: condition unchanged; in other words, getting worse. I couldn’t bring myself to go and visit him.
Belbo was away. Gudrun told me he telephoned to say he had to go somewhere for family reasons. What family? The odd thing was, he took away the word processor—Abulafia, he called it— and the printer, too. Gudrun also told me he had set it up at home in order to finish some work. Why had he gone to all that trouble? Couldn’t he do it in the office?
I felt like a displaced person. Lia and the baby wouldn’t be back until next week. The previous evening I’d dropped by Pi-lade’s, but found no one there.
The phone woke me. It was Belbo; his voice different, remote.
“Where the hell are you? Lost in the jungle?”
“Don’t joke, Casaubon. This is serious. I’m in Paris.”
“Paris? But I was the one who was supposed to go to the Conservatoire.”
“Stop joking, damn it. I’m in a booth—in a bar. I may not be able to talk much longer...”
“If you’re running out of change, call collect. I’ll wait here.”
“Change isn’t the problem. I’m in trouble.” He was talking fast, not giving me time to interrupt. “The Plan. The Plan is real. I know, don’t say it. They’re after me.”
“Who?” I still couldn’t understand.
“The Templars, Casaubon, for God’s sake. You won’t want to believe this, I know, but it’s all true. They think I have the map, they tricked me, made me come to Paris. At midnight Saturday they want me at the Conservatoire. Saturday—you understand—Saint John’s Eve...” He was talking disjointedly; and I couldn’t follow him. “I don’t want to go. I’m on the run Casaubon. They’ll