Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum (5 page)

I had arrived at Belbo's
at about eleven; it was now one. I would have to write a program
for anagrams of six letters, and the best way to do that was to
modify the program I already had written for four.

I needed some fresh air.
I went out, bought myself some food, another bottle of
whiskey.

I came back, left the
sandwiches in a corner, and started on the whiskey as I inserted
the Basic disk and went to work. I made the usual mistakes, and the
debugging took me a good half hour, but by two-thirty the program
was functional and the seven hundred and twenty names of God were
running down the screen.

iahueh

iahuhe

iahtuh

iahehu

iahhve

iahhev

iauheh

iauhhe

iauehh

iauehh

iauhhe

iauhih

iaehuh

iaehhv

iaeuhh

iaeuhh

iaehhu

iaehuh

iahhu*

iahhev

lahuhe

iahueh

iahehv

iaheuh

ihaueh

ihauhe

ihaeuh

ihaehu

ihahue

ihahcu

i hwaeh

ihuahe

ihueah

ihueha

ihuhae

ihuhea

iheauh

iheahv

iheuah

iheuha

Ihehau

ihehva

ihhaue

ihhaev

ihhuae

ihhuea

ihheau

ihheua

iuaheh

iuahhe

iuaehh

iuaehh

iuahhe

i uahth

iuhaeh

i uhahe

iuehah

iuehha

iuhahe

iuhaeh

i uhhae

iuhhea

iuheah

iuheha

itahuh

i eahhu

ieavhh

ieauhh

ieahhv

ieahuh

iehauh

iehahu

iehuah

iehuha

iehhau

iehhua

itvahh

ieuahh

ievhah

ieuhha

iiuhah

ieuhha

iehahu

iehauh

iehhau

iehhva

iehwah

iehMha

lhahue

ihaheu

ihauhe

ihaueh

ihaehv

ihaeuh

ihhaue

i hhaeu

ihhuae

ihhuea

ihheau

ihheua

ihuahe

ihuaeh

ihuhae

ihuhea

ihueah

ihueha

iheahu

iheauh

ihehau

ihehua

iheuah

iheuha

aihueh

ai huhe

ai heuh

aihihu

ai hhue

aihheu

ai uheh

ai uhhe

aiuehh

aiuehh

aiuhhe

aiuh?h

aiehuh

aiehhv

aieuhh

aieuhh

ai ehhu

ai ehuh

aihhue

aihheu

aih-uhe

aihueh

ai hehu

aiheuh

ahiueh

ahiuhe

ahieuh

ahiehu

ahihue

ah i hew

ahuieh

ahu i he

ahueih

ahuehi

ahuh ie

ahvhei

ahe i uh

aheihu

ahe u i h

aheuhi

aheh i u

ahehui

ahhii/B

ahhieu

ahhuie

ahhye i

ahhei v

ahheu i

auiheh

aui hhe

auiehh

auiehh

au ihhe

auiheh

auh i eh

auhihe

auheih

auhehi

auhhie

auhhei

aueihh

auei hh

aueh ih

auehh i

auehih

auehhi

auhihe

avhieh

auhhie

aMhhei

auhe ih

auhehi

aeihuh

aeihhu

aeiuhh

aeiuhh

aeihhu

aeihuh

aehiuh

aeh i hu

aehuih

aehuhi

aehhiu

avhhu i

aeu i hh

aeuihh

aeuh i h

aeuhhi

aeuhih

a>uhhi

aehihu

aehi uh

aehhiu

aehhui

aehuih

aehuh i

ahihue

ahiheu

ahiuhe

ahiueh

ahiehu

ah iewh

ahhiue

ahhieu

ahhuie

ahhuei

ahheiu

ahheu i

ahu i he

ahy ieh

ahuhie

ahuhe i

ahue i h

ahuehi

ahe i hu

aheiuh

aheh i u

ahehui

ahevih

aheuhi

I took the pages from
the printer without separating them, as if I were consulting the
scroll of the Torah. I tried name number thirty-six. And drew a
blank. A last sip of whiskey, then with hesitant fingers I tried
name number one hundred and twenty. Nothing.

I wanted to die. Yet I
felt that by now I was Jacopo Belbo, that he had surely thought as
I was thinking. So I must have made some mistake, a stupid, trivial
mistake. I was getting closer. Had Belbo, for some reason that
escaped me, perhaps counted from the end of the list?

Casaubon, you fool, I
said to myself. Of course he started from the end. That is, he
counted from right to left. Belbo had fed the computer the name of
God transliterated into Latin letters, including the vowels, but
the word was Hebrew, so he had written it from right to left. The
input hadn't been IAHVEH, but HEVHAI. The order of the permutations
had to be inverted.

I counted from the end
and tried both names again.

Nothing.

This was all wrong. I
was clinging stubbornly to an elegant but false hypothesis. It
happens to the best scientists.

No, not the best
scientists. To everyone. Only a month ago we had remarked that in
three recent novels, at least three, there was a protagonist trying
to find the name of God in a computer.

Belbo would have been
more original. Besides which, when you choose a password, you pick
something easy to remember, something that comes to mind
automatically. Ihvhea, indeed! In that case he would have had to
apply the notarikon to the temurah, to invent an acrostic to
remember the word. Something like Imelda Has Vindicated Hiram's
Evil Assassination.

But why should Belbo
have thought in DiotallevFs cabalistic terms? Belbo was obsessed by
the Plan, and into the Plan we had put all sorts of other
ingredients: Rosicrucians, Synarchy, Homunculi, the Pendulum, the
Tower, the Druids, the Ennoia...

Ennoia. I thought of
Lorenza Pellegrini. I reached out, picked up her censored
photograph, looked at it, and an inopportune thought surfaced, the
memory of that evening in Piedmont...I read the inscription on the
picture: "For I am the first and the last, the honored and the
hated, the saint and the prostitute. Sophia."

She must have written
that after Riccardo's party. Sophia. Six letters. And why would
they need to be scrambled? I was the one with the devious mind.
Belbo loves Lorenza, loves her precisely because she is the way she
is, and she is Sophia. And at that very moment she might be...No,
no good. Belbo was devious, too. I recalled Diotallevi's words: "In
the second se-firah the dark aleph changes into the luminous aleph.
From the Dark Point spring the letters of the Torah. The consonants
are the body, the vowels the breath, and together they accompany
the worshiper as he chants. When the chant moves, the consonants
and vowels move with it, and from them rises Hokhmah¡X wisdom,
knowledge, the primordial thought that contains, as in a box,
everything, all that will unfold in creation. Hokhmah holds the
essence of all that will emanate from it."

And what was Abulafia,
with its secret files? The box that held everything Belbo knew, or
thought he knew. His Sophia. With her secret name he would enter
Abulafia, the thing¡Xthe only thing¡Xhe made love to. But, making
love to Abulafia, he thinks of Lorenza. So he needs a word that
will give him possession of Abulafia but also serve as a talisman
to give him possession of Lorenza, to penetrate Lorenza's heart as
he penetrates Abulafia's. But Abulafia should be impenetrable to
others, as Lorenza is impenetrable to him. It is Belbo's hope that
he can enter, know, and conquer Lorenza's secret in the same way
that he possesses Abulafia.

But I was making this
up. My explanation was just like the Plan: substituting wishes for
reality.

Drunk, I sat down at the
keyboard again and tapped out SOPHIA. Again, nothing, and again the
machine asked me politely: "Do you have the password?" You stupid
machine, you feel no emotion at the thought of Lorenza.

Juda Leon se dio a
permutaciones

De letras y a complejas
variaciones

Y alfin pronuncio el
Nombre que es la Clave,

La Puerta, el Eco, el
Hue'sped y el Palacio...

¡XJorge Luis Borges, El
Golem

And then, in a fit of
hate, as I worked again at Abulafia's obtuse question "Do you have
the password?" I typed: NO.

The screen began to fill
with words, lines, codes, a flood of communication.

I had broken into
Abulafia.

Thrilled by my triumph,
I didn't ask myself why Belbo had chosen that, of all words. Now I
know, and I know, too, that in a moment of lucidity he understood
what I have come to understand only now. But last Thursday, my only
thought was that I had won.

I danced, clapped my
hands, sang an old army song. Then I went to the bathroom and
washed my face. When I came back, I began printing out the files,
last files first, what Belbo had written just before his flight to
Paris. As the printer chattered implacably, I devoured some food
and drank some more whiskey.

When the printer stopped
and I read what Belbo had written, I was aghast, unable to decide
whether this was an extraordinary revelation or the wild raving of
a madman.

What did I really know
about Jacopo Belbo? What had I learned about him in the two years I
worked at his side, almost every day? How much faith could I put in
the word of a man who, by his own admission, was writing under
exceptional circumstances, in a fog of alcohol, tobacco, and
terror, completely cut off from the world for three
days?

It was already night,
Thursday, June 21. My eyes were watering. I had been staring at the
screen and then at the printer's pointillist anthill since morning.
What I had read might be true or it might be false, but Belbo said
he would call in the morning. I would have to wait here. My head
swam.

I staggered into the
bedroom and fell, still dressed, onto the unmade bed.

At around eight I awoke
from a deep, sticky sleep, not realizing at first where I was.
Luckily I found a can of coffee and was able to make myself a few
cups. The phone didn't ring. I didn't dare go out to buy anything,
because Belbo might call while I was gone.

I went back to the
machine and began printing out the other disks in chronological
order. I found games, exercises, and accounts of events I knew
about, but told from Belbo's private point of view, so that they
were reshaped and appeared to me now in a different light. I found
diary fragments, confessions, outlines for works of fiction made
with the bitter obstinacy of a man who knows that his efforts are
doomed to failure. I found descriptions of people I remembered, but
now I saw them with different faces¡Xsinister faces, unless this
was because I was seeing them as part of a horrible final
mosaic.

And I found a file
devoted entirely to quotations taken from Belbo's most recent
reading. I recognized them immediately. Together we had pored over
so many texts during those months...The quotations were numbered:
one hundred and twenty in all. The number was probably a deliberate
choice; if not, the coincidence was disturbing. But why those
passages and not others?

Today I reinterpret
Belbo's files, the whole story they tell, in the light of that
quotation file. I tell the passages like the beads of a heretical
rosary. For Belbo some of them may have been an alarm, a hope of
rescue. Or am I, too, no longer able to distinguish common sense
from unmoored meaning? I try to convince myself that my
reinterpretation is correct, but as recently as this morning,
someone told me¡Xme, not Belbo¡Xthat I was mad.

On the horizon, beyond
the Bricco, the moon is slowly rising. This big house is filled
with strange rustling sounds, termites perhaps, mice, or the ghost
of Adelino Canepa...I dare not walk along the hall. I stay in Uncle
Carlo's study and look out the window. From time to time I step
onto the terrace, to see if anyone is coming up the hill. I feel
that I'm in a movie. How pathetic! "Here come the bad
guys..."

Yet the hill is so calm
tonight, a summer night now.

Adventurous, dubious,
and demented were the events I reconstructed to pass the time, and
to keep up my spirits, as I stood waiting in the periscope two
nights ago, between five and ten o'clock, moving my legs as if to
some Afro-Brazilian beat to help the blood circulate.

I thought back over the
last few years, abandoning myself to the magic rolling of the
atabaques, accepting the revelation that our fantasies, begun as a
mechanical ballet, were about to be transformed, in this temple of
things mechanical, into rite, possession, apparition, and the
dominion of Exu.

In the periscope I had
no proof that what I had learned from the printout was true. I
could still take refuge in doubt. At midnight, perhaps, I would
discover that I had come to Paris and hidden myself like a thief in
a harmless museum of technology only because I had foolishly fallen
into a macumba staged for credulous tourists, letting myself be
hypnotized by the perfu-madores and the rhythm of the
pontos.

As I recomposed the
mosaic, my mood changed from disenchantment to pity to
suspicion¡Xand I wish that now I could rid myself of this present
lucidity and recover that same vacillation between mystic illusion
and the presentiment of a trap; recover what I thought then as I
mulled over the documents I had read so frantically the day before
and reread that morning at the airport and during the flight to
Paris.

How irresponsibly Belbo,
Diotallevi, and I had rewritten the world, or¡Xas Diotallevi would
have put it¡Xhad rediscovered what in the Book had been engraved at
white heat between the black lines formed by the letters, like
black insects, that supposedly made the Torah clear!

And now, two days later,
having achieved, I hope, serenity and amor fati, I can tell the
story I reconstructed so anxiously (hoping it was false) inside the
periscope, the story I had read two days ago in Belbo's apartment,
the story I had lived for twelve years between Pilade's whiskey and
the dust of Garamond Press.