Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum (54 page)

A cover is always
necessary. In concealment lies a great part of our strength. Hence
we must always hide ourselves under the name of another
society.

¡XDie neuesten Arbeiten
des Spartacus und Philo in dem Illuminaten-Orden, 1794, p.
165

At that same time,
reading some pages of our Diabolicals, we found that the Comte de
Saint-Germain, among his numerous disguises, had assumed the
identity Rackoczi, at least according to the ambassador of
Frederick II in Dresden. And the landgrave of Hesse, at whose
residence Saint-Germain was supposed to have died, said that he was
of Transylvanian origin and his name was Rago/ki. We had also to
consider that Comenius dedicated his Pansophiae (a work surely born
in the odor of Rosicrucian-ism) to a landgrave (another landgrave)
named Ragovsky. A final touch to the mosaic: browsing at a
bookstall in Piazza Castello, I found a German work on Masonry,
anonymous, in which an unknown hand had added, on the flyleaf, a
note to the effect that the text was the work of one Karl Aug.
Ragotgky. Bearing in mind that Rakosky was the name of the
mysterious individual who had perhaps killed Colonel Ardenti, we
now could include in the Plan our Comte de
Saint-Germain.

"Aren't we giving that
scoundrel too much power?" Diotal-levi asked, concerned.

"No, no," Belbo replied,
"we need him. Like soy sauce in Chinese dishes. If it's not there,
it's not Chinese. Look at Aglie, who knows a thing or two: Did he
take Cagliostro as his model? Or Willermoz? No. Saint-Germain is
the quintessence of Homo Hermeticus."

Pierre Ivanovitch
Rachkovsky: jovial, sly, feline, intelligent, and astute, a
counterfeiter of genius. First a petty bureaucrat, later in contact
with revolutionary groups, in 1879 he is arrested by the secret
police and charged with having given refuge to terrorist companions
after their attempted assassination of General Drentel. He becomes
a police informer and (here we go!) joins the ranks of the Black
Hundreds. In 1890 he discovers in Paris an organization that makes
bombs for demonstrations in Russia; he arranges the arrest, back
home, of seventy-three terrorists. Ten years later, it is
discovered that the bombs were made by his own men.

In 1887 he circulates a
letter by a certain Ivanov, a repentant revolutionary, who declares
that the majority of the terrorists are Jews; in 1890, a
"confession par un veillard ancien revolution-naire," in which the
exiled revolutionaries in London are accused of being British
agents; and in 1892, a bogus text of Plekhanov, which accuses the
leaders of the Narodnaya Volya party of having had that confession
published.

In 1902 he forms a
Franco-Russian anti-Semitic league. To ensure its success he uses a
technique similar to that of the Ro-sicrucians: he declares that
the league exists, so that people will then create it. But he uses
another tactic, too: he cleverly mixes truth with falsehood, the
truth apparently damaging to him, so that nobody will doubt the
falsehood. He circulates in Paris a mysterious appeal to support
the Russian Patriotic League, headquarters in Kharkov. In the
appeal he attacks himself as the man who wants to make the league
fail, and he expresses the hope that he, Rachkovsky, will change
his mind. He accuses himself of relying on discredited characters
like Nilus, and this is true.

Why can the Protocols be
attributed to Rachkovsky?

Rachkovsky's sponsor is
Count Sergei Witte, a minister who desires to turn Russia into a
modern country. Why the progressive Witte makes use of the
reactionary Rachkovsky, God only knows; but at this point the three
of us would have been surprised by nothing. Witte has a political
opponent, Elie de Cyon, who has already attacked him publicly,
making assertions that recall certain passages in the Protocols,
except that in Cyon's writings there are no references to the Jews,
since he is of Jewish origin himself. In 1897, at Witte's orders,
Rachkovsky has Cyon's villa at Territat searched, and he finds a
pamphlet by Cyon drawn from Joly's book (or Sue's), in which the
ideas of Machiavelli-Napoleon III are attributed to Witte. With his
genius for falsification, Rachkovsky substitutes the Jews for Witte
and has the text circulated. The name Cyon is perfect, suggesting
Zion, and now everybody sees that an eminent Jewish figure is
denouncing a Jewish plot. This is how the Protocols are born. The
text falls into the hands of Juliana or Justine Glinka, who in
Paris frequents Madame Blavatsky's Parisian circle, and in her free
time she spies on and denounces Russian revolutionaries in exile.
This Glinka woman is undoubtedly an agent of the Paulicians, who
are allied to the agrarians and therefore want to convince the tsar
that Witte's programs are part of the international Jewish plot.
Glinka sends the document to General Orgeievsky, and he, through
the commander of the imperial guard, sees that it reaches the tsar.
Witte is in trouble.

So Rachkovsky, driven by
his anti-Semitism, contributes to the downfall of his sponsor. And
probably to his own. Because from that moment on we lose all trace
of him. But Saint-Germain perhaps donned new disguises, moved on to
new reincarnations. Nevertheless, our story was plausible,
rational, because it was backed by facts, it was true¡Xas Belbo
said, true as the Bible.

Which reminded me of
what De Angelis had told me about the synarchy. The fine thing
about the whole story¡Xour story, and perhaps also History itself,
as Belbo hinted, with feverish eyes, as he handed me his file
cards¡Xwas that groups locked in mortal combat were slaughtering
one another, each in turn using the other's weapons. "The first
duty of a good spy," I remarked, "is to denounce as spies those
whom he has infiltrated."

Belbo said: "I remember
an incident in ***. At sunset, along a shady avenue, I always ran
into this guy named Remo¡Xor something like that¡Xin a little black
Balilla. Black mustache, curly black hair, black shirt, and black
teeth, horribly rotten. And he would be kissing a girl. I was
revolted by those black teeth kissing that beautiful blonde. I
don't even remember what her face was like, but for me she was
virgin and prostitute, the eternal feminine. And great was my
revulsion." Instinctively he adopted a lofty tone to show irony,
aware that he had allowed himself to be carried away by the
innocent tenderness of the memory. "I asked myself why this Remo,
who belonged to the Black Brigades, dared allow himself to be seen
around like that, even in the periods when *** was not occupied by
the Fascists. Someone whispered to me that he was a Fascist spy.
However it was, one evening I saw him in the same black Balilla,
with the same black teeth, kissing the same blonde, but now with a
red kerchief around his neck and a khaki shirt. He had shifted to
the Garibaldi Brigades. Everybody made a fuss over him, and he
actually gave himself a nom de guerre: X9, like the Alex Raymond
character whom I had read about in the Awenturoso comics. Bravo,
X9, they said to him...And I hated him more than ever, because he
possessed the girl by popular consent. Those who said he was a
Fascist spy among the partisans were probably men who wanted the
girl themselves, so they cast suspicion on X9..."

"And then what
happened?"

"See here, Casaubon, why
are you so interested in my life?"

"Because you make it
sound like a folktale, and folktales are part of the collective
imagination."

"Good point. One
morning, X9 was driving along, out of his territory; maybe he had a
date to meet the girl in the fields, to go beyond their kissing and
pawing and show her that his prick was not as rotten as his
teeth¡XI'm sorry, I still can't make myself love him. Anyway, the
Fascists set a trap for him, captured him, took him into town, and
at five o'clock the next morning, they shot him."

A pause. Belbo looked at
his hands, which he had clasped, as if in prayer. Then he held them
apart and said, "That was the proof that he wasn't a
spy."

"The moral of the
story?"

"Who said stories have
to have a moral? But, now that I think about it, maybe the moral is
that sometimes, to prove something, you have to die."

I am that I
am.

¡XExodus 3:14

Ego sum qui sum. An
axiom of hermetic philosophy.

¡XMadame Blavatsky, Isis
Unveiled, 1877, p. 1

"Who are you?" three
hundred voices asked as one, while twenty swords flashed in the
hands of the nearest ghosts..."I am that I am," he said.

¡XAlexandre Dumas,
Giuseppe Balsamo, ii

I saw Belbo the next
morning. "Yesterday we sketched a splendid dime novel," I said to
him. "But maybe, if we want to make a convincing Plan, we should
stick closer to reality."

"What reality?" he asked
me. "Maybe only cheap fiction gives us the true measure of reality.
Maybe they've deceived us."

"How?"

"Making us believe that
on one hand there is Great Art, which portrays typical characters
in typical situations, and on the other hand you have the thriller,
the romance, which portrays atypical characters in atypical
situations. No true dandy, I thought, would have made love to
Scarlett O'Hara or even to Constance Bona-cieux or Princess Daisy.
I played with the dime novel, in order to take a stroll outside of
life. It comforted me, offering the unattainable. But I was
wrong."

"Wrong?"

"Wrong. Proust was
right: life is represented better by bad music than by a Missa
solemnis. Great Art makes fun of us as it comforts us, because it
shows us the world as the artists would like the world to be. The
dime novel, however, pretends to joke, but then it shows us the
world as it actually is¡Xor at least the world as it will become.
Women are a lot more like Milady than they are like Little Nell, Fu
Manchu is more real than Nathan the Wise, and History is closer to
what Sue narrates than to what Hegel projects. Shakespeare,
Melville, Balzac, and Dostoyevski all wrote sensational fiction.
What has taken place in the real world was predicted in penny
dreadfuls."

"The fact is, it's
easier for reality to imitate the dime novel than to imitate art.
Being a Mona Lisa is hard work; becoming Milady follows our natural
tendency to choose the easy way."

Diotallevi, silent until
now, remarked: "Or our Aglie, for example. He finds it easier to
imitate Saint-Germain than Voltaire."

"Yes," Belbo said, "and
women find Saint-Germain more interesting than
Voltaire."

Afterward, I found this
file, in which Belbo translated our discussion into fictional form,
amusing himself by reconstructing the story of Saint-Germain
without adding anything of his own, only a few sentences here and
there to provide transitions, in a furious collage of quotes,
plagiarisms, borrowings, cliches. Once again, to escape the
discomfort of History, Belbo wrote and reexamined life through a
literary stand-in.

FILENAME: The Return of
Saint-Germain

For five centuries now
the avenging hand of the All-Powerful has driven me from deepest
Asia all the way to this cold, damp land. I carry with me fear,
despair, death. But no, I am the notary of the Plan, even if nobody
else knows it. I have seen things far more terrible; preparing the
night of Saint Bartholomew was more irksome than the thing I am now
preparing to do. Oh, why do my lips curl in this satanic smile? I
am that I am. If only that wretch Cagliostro had not usurped from
me even this last privilege.

But my triumph is near.
Soapes, when I was Kelley, told me everything in the Tower of
London. The secret is to become someone else.

By shrewd plotting I had
Giuseppe Balsamo imprisoned in the fortress of San Leo, and I stole
his secrets. Saint-Germain has vanished; now all believe I am the
Conte di Cagliostro.

Midnight is struck by
all the clocks of the city. What unnatural peace. This silence does
not persuade me. A beautiful evening, though cold; the high moon
casts an icy glow over the impenetrable alleys of old Paris. It is
ten o'clock: the spire of the abbey of the Black Friars has just
tolled eight, slowly. The wind with mournful creaks moves the iron
weathercocks on the desolate expanse of rooftops. A thick blanket
of clouds covers the sky.

Skipper, are we turning
back? No. We're sinking! Damnation, the Patna's going to the
bottom. Jump, Seven Seas Jim, jump! To be free of this anguish I'd
give a diamond the size of a walnut. Luff the mainsail, take the
tiller, the topgallant, whatever you like, curse you, it's blowing
up!

Horribly I clench the
cloister of my teeth as a deathly pallor flushes my green, waxen
face.

How did I come here, I
who am the very image of revenge? The spirits of Hell will smile
with contempt at the tears of the creature whose menacing voice so
often made them tremble even in the womb of their fiery
abyss.

Holla,
lights!

How many steps did I
come down to reach this den? Seven? Thirty-six? There is no stone I
grazed, no step taken that did not hide a hieroglyph. When I have
uncovered them all, the Mystery will be revealed at last to my
faithful followers. The Message will be deciphered, its solution
will be the Key, and to the initiate, but only to the initiate, the
Enigma will then be revealed.

Between the Enigma and
the deciphering of the Message, the step is brief, and from it,
radiant, the Hierogram will emerge, upon which the Prayer of
Interrogation will be defined. Then the Arcanum will be drawn
aside, the veil, the Egyptian tapestry that covers the Pentacle.
And thence to the light, to announce the Occult Meaning of the
Pentacle, the Cabalistic Question to which only a few can reply,
and to recite in a voice of thunder the Impenetrable Sign. Bent
over it, the Thirty-six Invisibles will have to give the Answer,
the uttering of the Rune whose Meaning is open only to the sons of
Hermes. To them let the Mocking Seal be given, the Mask behind
which is outlined the Countenance they seek to bare, the Mystic
Rebus, the Sublime Anagram...

"Sator Arepo!" I shout
in a voice to make a specter tremble. And Sator Arepo appears,
abandoning the wheel he grips with the clever hands of a murderer.
At my command, he prostrates himself. I recognize him, for I had
already suspected his identity. He is Luciano, the handicapped
shipping clerk, who the Unknown Superiors have decreed will be the
executor of my evil and bloody task.

"Sator Arepo," I ask
mockingly, "do you know what is the Final Answer concealed behind
the Sublime Anagram?"

"No, Count," the
imprudent one replies. "I wait to learn it from your
lips."

From my pale lips
infernal laughter bursts and reechoes through the ancient
vaults.

"Fool! Only the true
initiate knows he does not know it!"

"Yes, master," the
maimed clerk replies stupidly. "As you wish. 1 am
ready."

We are in a squalid den
in Clignancourt. This evening I must punish, first of all, you, who
initiated me into the noble art of crime, who pretend to love me,
and who, what is worse, believe you love me, along with the
nameless enemies with whom you will spend the next weekend.
Luciano, unwelcome witness of my humiliations, will lend me his
arm¡Xhis one arm¡Xthen he, too, will die.

The room has a trapdoor
over a ditch or chamber, a subterranean passage used since time
immemorial for the storage of contraband goods, a place always dank
because it is connected to the Paris sewers, that labyrinth of
crime, and the ancient walls exude unspeakable miasmas, so that
when with the help of Luciano, ever faithful in evil, I make a hole
in the wall, water enters in spurts; it floods the cellar, the
already rotting walls collapse, and the passage joins the sewers,
and dead rats float past. The blackish surface that can be seen
from above is now the vestibule to perdition: far, far off, the
Seine, and then the sea...

A ladder hangs down,
fixed to the upper edge of the trap. On this, at water level,
Luciano takes his place, with a knife: one hand gripping the bottom
rung, the other holding the knife, the third ready to seize the
victim. "Now wait in silence," I say to him, "and you will
see."

I have convinced you to
destroy all men with a scar. Come with me, be mine forever, let us
do away with those importunate presences. I know well that you do
not love them¡Xyou told me as much¡Xbut we two will remain, we and
the subterranean currents.

Now you enter, haughty
as a vestal, hoarse and numb as a witch. O vision of hell that
stirs my age-old loins and grips my bosom in the clutch of desire,
O splendid half-caste, instrument of my doom! With talonlike hands
I rip the shirt of fine batiste that adorns my chest, and with my
nails I stripe my flesh with bleeding furrows, while a horrible
burning sears my lips as cold as the scales of the Serpent. A
hollow roar erupts from the black pit of my soul and bursts past
the cloister of my fierce teeth¡XI, centaur vomited by the
Tartar...But I suppress my cry and approach you with a horrid
smile.

"My beloved, my Sophia,"
I purr as only the secret chief of the Okhrana can purr. "I have
been waiting for you; come, crouch with me in the shadows, and
wait." And you laugh a hoarse, slimy laugh, savoring in advance
some inheritance, loot, a manuscript of the Protocols to sell to
the tsar...How cleverly you conceal behind that angel face your
demon nature, how modestly you sheathe your body in adrogynous blue
jeans, and your T-shirt, diaphanous, still hides the infamous lily
branded on your white flesh by the executioner of Lille!

The first dolt arrives,
drawn by me into the trap. I can barely make out his features
within the cloak that enfolds him, but he shows me the sign of the
Templars of Provins. It is Soapes, the Tomar group's
assassin.

"Count," he says to me,
"the moment has come. For too many years we have wandered,
scattered over the world. You have the final piece of the message.
I have the one that appeared at the beginning of the Great Game.
But this is another story. Let us join forces, and the
others..."

I complete his sentence:
"The others can go to hell. In the center of the room, brother, you
will find a coffer; in the coffer is what you have been seeking for
centuries. Do not fear the darkness; it does not threaten, but
protects us."

The dolt takes a few
steps, groping. A thud, a splash. He has fallen through the
trapdoor, but Luciano grabs him, wields the knife, the throat is
quickly cut, the gurgle of blood mingles with the churning of the
chthonian muck.

A knock at the door. "Is
that you, Disraeli?"

"Yes," answers the
stranger, in whom my readers will have recognized the grand master
of the English group, now risen to the pomp of power, but still not
satisfied. He speaks: "My lord, it is useless to deny, because it
is impossible to conceal that a great part of Europe is covered
with a network of these secret societies, just as the superficies
of the earth is now being covered with railroads..."

"You said that in the
Commons, on July 14, 1856. Nothing escapes me. Get to the
point."

The Baconian Jew mutters
a curse. He continues: "There are too many. The Thirty-six
Invisibles are now three hundred and sixty. Multiply that by two:
seven hundred and twenty. Subtract the hundred and twenty years at
the end of which the doors are opened, and you get six hundred,
like the charge of Balaclava."

Devilish man, the secret
science of numbers holds no secrets for him. "Well?"

"We have gold, you have
the map. Let us unite. Together we will be invincible."

With a hieratic gesture,
I point toward the spectral coffer that he, blinded by his desire,
thinks he discerns in the shadows. He steps forward, he
falls.

I hear the sinister
flash of Luciano's blade, and in the darkness I see the death
rattle that glistens in the Englishman's silent pupil. Justice is
done.

I await the third, the
French Rosicrucians' man, Montfaucon de Villars, ready to betray
the secrets of his sect.

"I am the Comte de
Gabalis," he introduces himself, the lying ninny.

I have only to whisper a
few words, and he is impelled toward his destiny. He falls, and
Luciano, greedy for blood, performs his task.

You smile with me in the
shadows, and you tell me you are mine, that your secret will be my
secret. Deceive yourself, yes, sinister caricature of the
Shekhinah. Yes, I am your Simon; but wait, you still do not know
the best of it. When you do know, you will have ceased
knowing.

What to add? One by one,
the others enter.

Padre Bresciani has
informed me that, representing the German II-luminati, Babette
d'lnterlaken will come, the great-granddaughter of Weishaupt, the
grand virgin of Helvetic Communism, who grew up amid roues,
thieves, and murderers. Expert in stealing impenetrable secrets, in
opening dispatches of state without breaking the seals, in
administering poisons as her sect orders her.

She enters then, the
young agathodemon of crime, enfolded in a polar-bear fur, her long
blond hair flowing from beneath the bold busby; her eyes haughty,
sarcastic. With the usual fraud, I direct her toward her
destruction.