Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum (34 page)

The Traditio Templi
postulates, independently, the tradition of a templar knighthood, a
spiritual knighthood of initiates...

¡XHenry Corbin, Temple
et contemplation, Paris, Flammarion, 1980

"I believe I've got your
Agile figured out, Casaubon," Diotal-levi said, having ordered a
sparkling white wine from Pilade, making all of us fear for his
moral health. "He's a scholar, curious about the secret sciences,
suspicious of dilettantes, of those who learn by ear. Yet, as we
ourselves learned today, by our eavesdropping, he may scorn them
but he listens to them, he may criticize them but he doesn't
dissociate himself from them."

"Signer or Count or
Margrave Aglie, or whatever the hell he is, said something very
revealing today," Belbo added. "He used the expression ¡¥spiritual
knighthood.' He feels joined to them by a bond of spiritual
knighthood. I think I understand him."

"Joined, in what sense?"
we asked.

Belbo was now on his
third martini (whiskey in the evening, he claimed, because it was
calming and induced reverie; martinis in the afternoon, because
they stimulated and fortified). He began talking about his
childhood in ***, as he had already done once with me.

"It was between 1943 and
1945, that is, the period of transition from Fascism to democracy
and then to the dictatorship of the Salo republic, with the
partisan war going on in the mountains. At the beginning of this
story I was eleven, and staying in my uncle Carlo's house. My
family normally lived in the city, but in 1943 the air raids were
increasing and my mother had decided to evacuate.

"Uncle Carlo and Aunt
Caterina lived in ***. Uncle Carlo came from a farming family and
had inherited the *** house, with some land, which was cultivated
by a tenant farmer named Adeline Canepa. The tenant planted,
harvested the grain, made the wine, and gave half of everything to
the owner. A tense situation, obviously: the tenant considered
himself exploited, and so did the owner, who received only half the
produce of his land.

The landowners hated the
tenants and the tenants hated the landowners. But in Uncle Carlo's
case they lived side by side.

"In 1914 Uncle Carlo had
enlisted in the Alpine troops. A bluff Piedmontese, all duty and
Fatherland, he became a lieutenant, then a captain. One day, in a
battle on the Carso, he found himself beside an idiot soldier who
let a grenade explode in his hands¡Xwhy else call them hand
grenades? Uncle Carlo was about to be thrown into a common grave
when an orderly realized he was still alive. They took him to a
field hospital, removed the eye that was hanging out of its socket,
cut off one arm, and, according to Aunt Caterina, they also put a
metal plate in his head, because he had lost some of his skull. In
other words, a masterpiece of surgery on the one hand and a hero on
the other. Silver medal, cavalier of the Crown of Italy, and after
the war a good steady job in public administration. Uncle Carlo
ended up head of the tax office in ***, where, after inheriting the
family property, he went to live in the ancestral home with Adeline
Canepa and family.

"As head of the tax
office, Uncle Carlo was a local bigwig, and as a mutilated veteran
and cavalier of the Crown of Italy, he was naturally on the side of
the government, which happened to be the Fascist dictatorship. Was
Uncle Carlo a Fascist?

"In those days, Fascism
had given veterans status, had rewarded them with decorations and
promotions; so let's say Uncle Carlo was moderately Fascist.
Fascist enough to earn the hatred of Adeline Canepa, who was
ardently anti-Fascist, for obvious reasons. Canepa had to go to
Uncle Carlo every year to make his income declaration. He would
arrive in the office with a bold expression of complicity, having
tried to corrupt Aunt Caterina with a few dozen eggs. And he would
find himself up against Uncle Carlo, who, being a hero, was not
only incorruptible, but also knew better than anyone how much
Canepa had stolen from him in the course of the year, and who
wouldn't forgive him one cent. Adeline Canepa, considering himself
a victim of the dictatorship, began spreading slanderous rumors
about Uncle Carlo. One lived on the ground floor, the other on the
floor above; they met every morning and night, but no longer
exchanged greetings. Communication was maintained through Aunt
Caterina and, after our arrival, through my mother¡Xto whom Adeline
Canepa expressed much sympathy and understanding, since she was the
sister-in-law of a monster. My uncle, in his gray double-breasted
suit and bowler, would come home every evening at six with his copy
of La Stampa still to be read. He walked erect, like an Alpine
soldier, his gray eye on the peak to be stormed. He passed by
Adelino Canepa, who at that hour was enjoying the cool air on a
bench in the garden, and it was as if my uncle did not see him.
Then he would encounter Si-gnora Canepa at the downstairs door and
ceremoniously doff his hat. And so it went, every evening, year
after year."

It was eight o'clock;
Lorenza wasn't coming, as she had promised. Belbo was on his fifth
martini.

"Then came 1943. One
morning Uncle Carlo came into our room, waked me with a kiss, and
said, ¡¥My boy, you want to hear the biggest news of the year?
They've kicked out Mussolini.' I never figured out whether or not
Uncle Carlo suffered over it. He was a citizen of total integrity
and a servant of the state. If he did suffer, he said nothing about
it, and he went on running the tax office for the Badoglio
government. Then came September 8, and the area in which we lived
fell under the control of the Fascists' Social Republic, and Uncle
Carlo again adjusted. He collected taxes for the Social
Republic.

"Adeline Canepa,
meanwhile, boasted of his contacts with the partisan groups forming
in the mountains, and he promised vengeance, the making of
examples. We kids didn't yet know who the partisans were. There
were great tales about them, but so far nobody had seen them. There
was talk about a Badoglian leader known as Mongo¡Xa nickname,
naturally, as was the custom then; many said he had taken it from
Flash Gordon. Mongo was a former Carabinieri sergeant major who had
lost a leg in the first fighting against the Fascists and the SS
and now commanded all the brigades in the hills around
***.

"And then came the
disaster: one day the partisans showed up in town. They had
descended from the hills, they were running wild in the streets,
still without uniforms, just blue kerchiefs, and firing rounds into
the air to make their presence known. The news spread; all the
people locked themselves in their houses. It wasn't yet clear what
sort of men these partisans were. Aunt Caterina was only mildly
concerned: after all, those partisans were friends of Adeline
Canepa, or at least Adelino Canepa claimed to be a friend of
theirs, so they wouldn't do anything bad to Uncle, would they? They
would. We were informed that around eleven o'clock a squad of
partisans with automatic rifles aimed had entered the tax office,
arrested Uncle Carlo, and carried him off, destination unknown.
Aunt Caterina lay down on her bed, and whitish foam began to
dribble from her lips. She declared that Uncle Carlo would be
killed. A blow with a rifle butt would-be enough: with the metal
plate in his head, he would die on the spot.

"Drawn by my aunt's
moans, Adelino Canepa arrived with his wife and children. My aunt
cried that he was a Judas, that he had reported Uncle to the
partisans because Uncle collected taxes for the Social Republic.
Adelino Canepa swore by everything sacred that this was not true,
but obviously he felt responsible, because he had talked too much
in town. My aunt sent him away. Adelino Canepa wept, appealed to my
mother, reminded her of all the times he had sold her a rabbit or a
chicken at a ridiculously low price, but my mother maintained a
dignified silence, Aunt Caterina continued to dribble whitish foam,
I cried. Finally, after two hours of agony, we heard shouts, and
Uncle Carlo appeared on a bicycle, steering it with his one arm and
looking as if he were returning from a picnic. Seeing a disturbance
in the garden, he asked what had happened. Uncle hated dramas, like
everyone in our parts. He went upstairs, approached the bed of pain
of Aunt Caterina, who was still kicking her scrawny legs, and
inquired why she was so agitated."

"What had
happened?"

"What had happened was
this. Mongo's partisans, probably hearing some of Adelino Canepa's
mutterings, had identified Uncle Carlo as one of the local
representatives of the regime, so they arrested him to teach the
whole town a lesson. He was taken outside the town in a truck and
found himself before Mongo. Mongo, his war medals shining, stood
with a gun in his right hand and his left holding a crutch. Uncle
Carlo¡Xbut I really don't think he was being clever; I think it was
instinct, or the ritual of chivalry¡Xsnapped to attention,
introduced himself: Major Carlo Covasso, Alpine Division, disabled
veteran, silver medal. And Mongo also snapped to attention and
introduced himself: Sergeant Major Rebaudengo, Royal Carabineers,
commander of the Badoglian brigade Bettino Ricasoli, bronze medal.
¡¥Where?' Uncle Carlo asked. And Mongo, impressed, said: ¡¥Pordoi,
Major, hill 327."By God,' said Uncle Carlo, ¡¥I was at hill 328,
third regiment, Sasso di Stria!' The battle of the solstice? Battle
of the solstice it was. And the cannon on Five-Finger Mountain?
Dammit to hell, do I remember! And the bayonet attack on Saint
Crispin's Eve? Yessir! That sort of thing. Then, the one without an
arm, the other without a leg, on the same impulse they took a step
forward and embraced. Mongo said then, ¡¥You see, Cavalier, it's
this way, Major: we were informed that you collect taxes for the
Fascist government that toadies to the invaders."You see,
Commander,' Uncle Carlo said, ¡¥it's this way: I have a family and
receive a salary from the government, and the government is what it
is; I didn't choose it, and what would you have done in my
place?"My dear Major,' Mongo replied, ¡¥in your place, I'd have
done what you did, but try at least to collect the taxes slowly;
take your time.' Til see what I can do,' Uncle Carlo said. ¡¥I have
nothing against you men; you, too, are sons of Italy and valiant
fighters.' They understood each other, because they both thought of
Fatherland with a capital F. Mongo ordered his men to give the
major a' bicycle, and Uncle Carlo went home. Adelino Canepa didn't
show his face for several months.

"There, I don't know if
this qualifies as spiritual knighthood, but I'm certain there are
bonds that endure above factions and parties."

For I am the first and
the last. I am the honored and the hated. I am the saint and the
prostitute.

¡XFragment of Nag
Hammadi 6, 2

Lorenza Pellegrini
entered. Belbo looked up at the ceiling and ordered a final
martini. There was tension in the air, and I got up to leave, but
Lorenza stopped me. "No. All of you come with me. Tonight's the
opening of Riccardo's show; he's inaugurating a new style! He's
great! You know him, Jacopo."

I knew who Riccardo was;
he was always hanging around Pilade's. But at that moment I didn't
understand why Belbo's eyes were fixed so intensely on the ceiling.
Having read the files, I realize now that Riccardo was the man with
the scar, the man with whom Belbo had lacked the courage to start a
fight.

The gallery wasn't far
from Pilade's, Lorenza insisted. They had organized a real
party¡Xor, rather, an orgy. Diotallevi became nervous at this and
immediately said he had to go home. I hesitated, but it was obvious
Lorenza wanted me along, and this, too, made Belbo suffer, since he
saw the possibility of a tete-a-tete slipping farther and farther
away. But I couldn't refuse; so we set out.

I didn't care that much
for Riccardo. In the early sixties he turned out very boring
paintings, small canvases in blacks and grays, very geometric,
slightly optical, the sort of stuff that made your eyes swim. They
bore titles like Composition 15, Parallax 17, Euclid X. But in 1968
he started showing in squats, he changed his palette; now there
were only violent blacks and whites, no grays, the strokes were
bolder, and the titles were like Ce n'est qu'un debut, Molotov, A
Hundred Flowers. When I got back to Milan, I saw a show of his in a
club where Dr. Wagner was worshiped. Riccardo had eliminated black,
was working in white only, the contrasts provided by the texture
and relief of the paint on porous Fabriano paper, so that the
pictures¡Xas he explained¡Xwould reveal different figures in
different lightings. Their titles were In Praise of Ambiguity,
A/Travers, fa, Berggasse, and Denegation 15.

That evening, as soon as
we entered the new gallery, I saw that Riccardo's poetics had
undergone a profound change. The show was entitled Megale
Apophasis. Riccardo had turned figurative with a dazzling palette.
He played with quotations, and, since I don't believe he knew how
to draw, I guess he worked by projecting onto the canvas the slide
of a famous painting. His choices hovered between the
turn-of-the-century pompiers and the early-twentieth-century
Symbolists. Over the projected image he worked with a pointillist
technique, using infinitesimal gradations of color, covering the
whole spectrum dot by dot, so that he always began from a
blindingly bright nucleus and ended at absolute black, or vice
versa, depending on the mystical or cosmological concept he wanted
to express. There were mountains that shot rays of light, which
were broken up into a fine powder of pale spheres, and there were
concentric skies with hints of angels with transparent wings,
something like the Paradise of Dore". The titles were Beatrix,
Mystica Rosa, Dante Gabriels 33, Fedeli d'Amore, Atanor, Homunculus
666. This is the source of Lorenza's passion for homunculi, I said
to myself. The largest picture was entitled Sophia, and it showed a
rain of black angels, which faded at the ground and created a white
creature caressed by great livid hands, the creature a copy of the
one you see held up against the sky in Guernica. The juxtaposition
was dubious, and, seen close up, the execution proved crude, but at
a distance of two or three meters the effect was quite
lyrical.

"I'm a realist of the
old school," Belbo whispered to me. "I understand only Mondrian.
What does a nongeometric picture say?"

"He was geometric
before," I said.

"That wasn't geometry,
that was bathroom tiles."

Meanwhile, Lorenza
rushed to embrace Riccardo. He and Belbo exchanged a nod of
greeting. There was a crowd; the gallery was trying to look like a
New York loft, all white, with heating or water pipes exposed on
the ceiling. God knows what it had cost them to backdate the place
like that. In one corner, a sound system was deafening those
present with Asian music¡X sitar music, if I recall rightly, the
kind where you can't pick out a tune. Everybody walked absently
past the pictures to crowd around the tables at the end and grab
paper cups. We had arrived well into the evening: the air was thick
with smoke, some girls from time to time hinted at dance movements
in the center of the room, but everybody was still busy conversing,
busy consuming the plentiful buffet. I sat on a sofa, and at my
feet lay a great glass bowl half-filled with fruit salad. I was
about to take a little, because I hadn't had any supper, but then I
saw in it a footprint, which had crushed the little cubes of fruit
in the center, reducing them to a homogeneous pave. This was not
that surprising, because the floor was now spattered in many places
with white wine, and some of the guests were already
staggering.

Belbo had captured a
paper cup and was proceeding lazily, without any apparent goal,
occasionally slapping someone on the shoulder. He was trying to
find Lorenza.

But few people remained
motionless; the crowd was intent on a kind of circular movement,
like bees hunting for a hidden flower. Though I wasn't looking for
anything myself, I stood up and moved, shifted in response to the
impulses transmitted to me by the group, and not far from me I saw
Lorenza. She was wandering, miming the impassioned recognition of
this man, of that: head high, eyes deliberately myopic-wide, back
straight, breasts steady, and her steps haphazard, like a
giraffe's.

At a certain point the
human flow trapped me in a corner behind a table, where Lorenza and
Belbo had their backs to me, having finally met, perhaps by chance,
and they were also trapped. I don't know if they were aware of my
presence, but the noise was so great that nobody could hear what
others were saying at any distance. Lorenza and Belbo therefore
considered themselves isolated, and I was forced to hear their
conversation.

"Well," Belbo said,
"where did you meet your Aglie?"

"My Aglie? Yours, too,
from what I saw. You can know Simon, but I can't.
Fine.''

"Why do you call him
Simon? Why does he call you Sophia?"

"Oh, it's a game. I met
him at a friend's place¡Xall right? And I find him fascinating. He
kisses my hand as if I were a princess. He could be my
father."

"He could be the father
of your son, if you aren't careful."

It sounded like me, in
Bahia, talking to Amparo. Lorenza was right. Aglie knew how to kiss
the hand of a young lady unfamiliar with that ritual.

"Why Simon and Sophia?"
Belbo insisted. "Is his name Simon? ¡¥¡¥

"It's a wonderful story.
Did you know that our universe is the result of an error and that
it's partly my fault? Sophia was the female part of God, because
God then was more female than male; it was you men who later put a
beard on him and started calling him He. I was his good half. Simon
says I tried to create the world without asking permission¡XI, the
Sophia, who is also called¡Xwait a minute¡Xthe Ennoia. But my male
part didn't want to create; maybe he lacked the courage or was
impotent. So instead of uniting with him, I decided to make the
world by myself. I couldn't resist; it was through an excess of
love. Which is true; I adore this whole mixed-up universe. And
that's why I'm the soul of this world, according to
Simon."

"How nice! Does he give
that line to all the girls?"

"No, stupid, just to me,
because he understands me better than you do. He doesn't try to
create me in his image. He understands I have to be allowed to live
my life in my own way. And that's what Sophia did; she flung
herself into making the world. She came up against primordial
matter, which was disgusting, probably because it didn't use a
deodorant. And then, I think, she accidentally created the
Demi¡Xhow do you say it?"

"You mean the
Demiurge?"

"That's him, yes. Or
maybe it wasn't Sophia who made this Demiurge; maybe he was already
around and she egged him on: Get moving, silly, make the world, and
then we'll have real fun. The Demiurge must have been a real
screwup, because he didn't know how to make the world properly. In
fact, he shouldn't even have tried it, because matter is bad, and
he wasn't authorized to touch the stuff. Anyway, he made this awful
mess, and Sophia was caught inside. Prisoner of the
world."

Lorenza was drinking a
lot. A number of people had started dancing sleepily in the center
of the room, their eyes closed, and Riccardo came by every few
minutes and filled her cup. Belbo tried to stop him, saying she had
already had too much to drink, but Riccardo laughed and shook his
head, and she said indignantly that she could hold her alcohol
better than Jacopo because she was younger.

"All right," Belbo said,
"don't listen to Granddad, listen to Simon. What else did he tell
you?"

"What I said: I'm
prisoner of the world, or, rather, of the bad angels...because in
this story the angels are bad and they helped the Demiurge make all
this mess...The bad angels, anyhow, are holding me; they don't want
me to get away, and they make me suffer. But every now and then in
the world of men there is someone who recognizes me. Like Simon. He
says it happened to him once before, a thousand years ago¡XI forgot
to tell you Simon's practically immortal; you can't imagine all the
things he's seen..."

"Of course...but don't
drink anymore now."

"Sssh...Simon found me
once when I was a prostitute in a brothel in Tyre and my name was
Helen..."

"He tells you that? And
you're overjoyed. Pray let me kiss your hand, wAore of my
screwed-op universe...Satne gea-tleman."

"If anything, that Helen
was the whore. And besides, in those days, when they said
prostitute, they meant a woman who was free, without ties, an
intellectual who didn't want to be a housewife. She might hold a
salon. Today she'd be in public relations. Would you call a PR
woman a whore or a hooker, who lights bonfires along the highway
for truck drivers?''

At that point Riccardo
came and took her by the arm. "Come and dance," he said.

In the middle of the
room, they made faint, dreamy movements, as if beating a drum. But
from time to time Riccardo drew her to him, put a hand possessively
on the back of her neck, and she would follow him with closed eyes,
her face flushed, head thrown back, hair hanging free, vertically.
Belbo lit one cigarette after another.

Then Lorenza grabbed
Riccardo by the waist and slowly pulled him until they were only a
step from Belbo. Still dancing, she took the paper cup from Belbo's
hand. Holding Riccardo with her left hand, the cup with her right,
she turned her moist eyes on Belbo. It was almost as if she had
been crying, but she smiled and said: "It wasn't the only time,
either." "The only time, what?" Belbo asked.

"That he met Sophia.
Centuries after that, Simon was also Guillaume Postel." "A letter
carrier?"

"Idiot. He was a
Renaissance scholar who read Jewish¡X" "Hebrew."

"Same difference. He
read it the way kids read Superman. Without a dictionary. Anyhow,
in a hospital in Venice he meets an old illiterate maidservant,
Joanna. He looks at her and says, ¡¥You are the new incarnation of
Sophia, the Ennoia, the Great Mother descended into our midst to
redeem the whole world, which has a female soul.' And so Postel
takes Joanna with him; everybody says he's crazy, but he pays no
attention; he adores her, wants to free her from the angels'
imprisonment, and when she dies, he sits and stares at the sun for
an hour and goes for days without drinking or eating, inhabited by
Joanna, who no longer exists but it's as if she did, because she's
still there, she inhabits the world, and every now and then she
resurfaces, that is, she's reincarnated...Isn't that a story to
make you cry?"

"I'm dissolved in tears.
Are you so pleased to be Sophia?"

"But I'm Sophia for you,
too, darling. You know that before you met me you wore the most
dreadful ghastly ties and had dandruff on your
shoulders."

Riccardo was holding her
neck again. "May I join the conversation?" he said.

"You keep quiet and
dance. You're the instrument of my lust." "Suits me."

Belbo went on as if the
other man didn't exist. "So you're his prostitute, his feminist who
does public relations, and he's your Simon."

"My name's not Simon,"
Riccardo said, his tongue thick. "We're not talking about you,"
Belbo said. His behavior had been making me uneasy for some while
now. He, as a rule so guarded about his feelings, was having a
lovers' quarrel in front of a witness, in front of a rival, even.
But this last remark made me realize that with his baring of
himself before the other man¡Xthe true rival being yet
another¡XBelbo was reasserting, in the only way he could, his
possession of Lorenza. Meanwhile, holding out her cup for more
drink, Lorenza answered: "But it's a game. I love you."

"Thank God you don't
hate me. Listen, I'd like to go home, I have a stomachache. I'm
still a prisoner of base matter. Simon hasn't done me any good.
Will you come with me?"