Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum by eco foucault (ebook smartphone .txt) 📕

drainpipes. The houses betrayed a ghostly life of their own, ahidden life...An old usurer, wrapped in a worn coat, brushed us inpassing, and I thought I heard him murmur, "Beware AthanasiusPer-nath..." Dee murmured back, "I fear quite anotherAthanasius..." And suddenly we were in the Alley of theGoldsmiths.

There, in the gloom ofanother alley¡Xand the ears I no longer have, at this memory,quiver under my worn cap¡Xa giant loomed up before us, a horriblegray creature with a dull expression, his body sheathed in bronzeverdigris, leaning on a gnarled and knobby stick of white wood. Theapparition gave off an intense odor of sandalwood. Mortal horrormagically coalesced in that being that confronted me, yet I couldnot take my eyes off the nebulous globe that sat atop hisshoulders, and in it discerned, barely, the rapacious face of anEgyptian ibis, and behind that face, more faces, incubi of myimagination and my memory. The outlines of the ghost, in thedarkness of that alley, dilated, contracted, as in a slow,nonliving respiration....And¡Xoh, horror!¡X instead of feet, I saw,as I stared at him, on the snow two shapeless stumps whose flesh,gray and bloodless, was rolled up, as if in concentricswellings.

My voraciousmemories....

"The golem!" Dee cried,raising both arms to heaven. His black coat with broad sleeves fellto the ground, as if to create a cingulum, an umbilical cordbetween the aerial position of the hands and the surface, or thedepths, of the earth. "Jezebel, Malkuth, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes!"he said. And suddenly the golem dissolved like a sand castle struckby a gust of wind. We were blinded by the particles of its claybody, which tore through the air like atoms, until finally at ourfeet was a little pile of ashes. Dee bent down, searched in theashes with his bony fingers, and drew out a scroll, which he hid inhis bosom.

From the shadows thenrose an old rabbi, with a greasy hat that greatly resembled my cap."Dr. Dee, I presume," he said.

"Here Comes Everybody,"Dee replied humbly. "Rabbi Allevi, what a pleasantsurprise..."

The man said, "Did youhappen to see a creature roaming these parts?"

"A creature?" Dee said,feigning amazement. "What sort of creature?"

"Come off it, Dee,"Rabbi Allevi said. "It was my golem."

"Your golem? I knownothing about a golem."

"Take care, Dr. Dee!"Rabbi Allevi said, livid. "You're playing a dangerous game, you'reout of your league."

"I don't know whatyou're talking about, Rabbi Allevi," said Dee. "We're here to makea few ounces of gold for the emperor. We're not a couple of cheapnecromancers."

"Give me back thescroll, at least," Rabbi Allevi begged.

"What scroll?" Deeasked, with diabolical ingenuousness.

"Curse you, Dr. Dee,"said the rabbi. "And verily I say unto thee, thou shall not see thedawn of the new century." And he went off into the night, murmuringstrange words without consonants. Oh, Language Diabolical andHoly.

Dee was huddled againstthe damp wall of the alley, his face ashen, his hair bristling onhis head. "I know Rabbi Allevi," he said. "I will die on August 5,1608, of the Gregorian calendar. So now, Kelley, you must help meto carry out my plan. You are the one who will have to bring it tofulfillment. Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchymy. Remember,"he said. But I would remember in any case, and William with me. Andagainst me.

* * *

He said no more. Thepale fog that rubs its back against the panes, the yellow smokethat rubs its back against the panes, licked with its tongue thestreet corners. We were now in another alley; whitish vapors camefrom the grilles at ground level, and through them you couldglimpse squalid dens with tilting walls, defined by gradations ofmisty gray. I saw, as he came groping down a stairway (the stepsoddly orthogonal), the figure of an old man in a worn frock coatand a top hat. And Dee saw him. "Caligari!" he exclaimed. "He'shere, too, in the house of Madame Sosostris, the famousclairvoyante! We have to get moving."

Quickening our steps, wearrived at the door of a hovel in a poorly lit alley, sinister andSemitic.

We knocked, and the dooropened as if by magic. We entered a spacious room: there wereseven-branched candelabra, tetragrams in relief, Stars of Davidlike monstrances. Old violins, the color of the veneer on certainold paintings, were piled in the entrance on a refectory table ofanamorphic irregularity. A great crocodile hung, mummified, fromthe ceiling, swaying slightly in the dim glow of a single torch, orof many, or of none. In the rear, before a kind of curtain orcanopy under which stood a tabernacle, kneeling in prayer,ceaselessly and blasphemously murmuring the seventy-two names ofGod, was an old man. I knew, by a sudden stroke of nous, that thiswas Heinrich Khunrath.

"Come to the point,Dee," he said, turning and breaking off his prayer. "What do youwant?" He resembled a stuffed armadillo, an agelessiguana.

"Khunrath," Dee said,"the third encounter did not take place."

Khunrath exploded in ahorrible curse: "Lapis exillis! Now what?"

"Khunrath," Dee said,"you could throw out some bait; you could put me in touch with theGerman line."

"Let me see," Khunrathsaid. "I could ask Maier, who is in touch with many people at thecourt. But you will tell me the secret of Virgin's Milk, the MostSecret Oven of the Philosophers."

Dee smiled. Oh thedivine smile of that Sophos! He concentrated then as if in prayer,and said in a low voice: "When you wish to translate into water orVirgin's Milk a sublimate of Mercury, place the Thing dulypulverized over the lamina between the little weights and thegoblet. Do not cover it but see that the hot air strikes the nakedmatter, administer it to the fire of three coals, and keep it alivefor eight solar days, then remove it and pound it well on marbleuntil it is a fine paste. This done, put it inside a glass alembicand distill it in a Balneum Mariae over a cauldron of water set insuch a way that it does not touch the water below by the space oftwo fingers but remains suspended in air, and at the same timelight the fire beneath the Balneum. Then, and only then, though theSilver does not touch the water, finding itself in this warm andmoist womb, will it change to liquid."

"Master," said