Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [95]
“Smart, those brethren. Nothing like a Paris launching to make you fashionable.”
“You’re right. Listen to what happened next. Descartes—that’s right, Descartes himself—had, several years before, gone looking for them in Germany, but he never found them, because, as his biographer says, they deliberately disguised themselves. By the time he got back to Paris, the manifestoes had appeared, and he learned mat everybody considered him a Rosicrucian. Not a good thing to be, given the atmosphere at the time. It also irritated his friend Mersenne, who was already fulminating against the Rosicrucians, calling them wretches, subversives, mages, and cabalists bent on sowing perverted doctrines. So what does Descartes do? Simply appears in public as often as possible. Since everybody can undeniably see him, he must not be a Rosicru-cian, because if he were, he’d be invisible.”
“That’s method for you!”
“Of course, denying it wouldn’t have worked. The way things were, if somebody came up to you and said, ‘Hi there, I’m a Rosicrucian,’ that meant he wasn’t. No self-respecting Rosicru-cian would acknowledge it. On the contrary, he would deny it to his last breath.”
“But you can’t say that anyone who denies being a Rosicrucian is a Rosicrucian, because I say I’m not, and that doesn’t make me one.”
“But the denial is itself suspicious.”
“No, it’s not. What would a Rosicrucian do once he realized people weren’t believing those who said they were, and that people suspected only those who said they weren’t? He’d say he was, to make them think he wasn’t.”
“Damnation. So those who say they’re Rosicrucians are lying, which means they really are! No, no, Amparo, we musn’t fall into their trap. Their spies are everywhere, even under this bed, so now they know that we know, and therefore they say they aren’t.”
“Darling, you’re scaring me.”
“Don’t worry, I’m here, and I’m stupid, so when they say they aren’t, I’ll believe they are and unmask them at once. The Rosicrucian unmasked is harmless; you can shoo him out the window with a rolled-up newspaper.”
“What about Aglie? He wants us to think he’s the Comte de Saint-Germain. Obviously so we’ll think he isn’t. Therefore, he’s a Rosicrucian. Or isn’t he?”
“Listen, Amparo, let’s get some sleep.”
“Oh, no, now I want to hear the rest.”
“The rest is a complete mess. Everybody’s a Rosicrucian. In 1627 Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis was published, and readers thought he was talking about the land of the Rosicrucians, even though he never mentioned them. Poor Johann Valentin Andreae died, still swearing up and down that he wasn’t a Rosicrucian, or if he said he was, he had only been kidding, but by now it was too late. The Rosicrucians were everywhere, aided by the feet that they didn’t exist.’’
“Like God.”
“Now that you mention it, let’s see. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are a bunch of practical jokers who meet somewhere and decide to have a contest. They invent a character, agree on a few basic facts, and then each one’s free to take it and run with it. At the end, they’ll see who’s done the best job. The four stories are picked up by some friends who act as critics: Matthew is fairly realistic, but insists on that Messiah business too much; Mark isn’t bad, just a little sloppy; Luke is elegant, no denying that; and John takes the philosophy a little too far. Actually, though, the books have an appeal, they circulate, and when the four realize what’s happening, it’s too late. Paul has already met Jesus on the road to Damascus, Pliny begins his investigation ordered by the worried emperor, and a legion of apocryphal writers pretends also to know plenty...Toi, apo-cryphe lecteur, mon semblable, mon frere. It all goes to Peter’s head; he takes himself seriously. John threatens to tell the truth, Peter and Paul have him chained up on the island of Patmos. Soon the poor man is seeing things: Help, there are locusts