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

metals,and you'll say to him, ¡¥My son, one day all this will be yours.'"

"And if it's agirl?"

"You'll say to her, ¡¥Mydaughter, one day all this will be your no-good husband's.'"

"And what do I dobefore?"

"During labor, betweenone wave of pain and the next, you have to count, because as theinterval grows shorter, the moment approaches. We'll counttogether, and you'll set the rhythm for me, like rowers in agalley. It'll be as if you, too, were coaxing the Thing out fromits dark lair. Poor little Thing....Feel it. Now it's so cozy therein the dark, sucking up humors like an octopus, all free, andthen¡Xwham¡Xit pops out into the daylight, blinks, and says, Wherethe hell am I?"

"Poor little Thing. Andit hasn't even met Signer Garamond. Come on, let's rehearse thecounting part."

We counted in thedarkness, holding hands. I daydreamed. The Thing, with its birth,would give reality and meaning to all the old wives' tales of theDiabolicals. Poor Diabolicals, who spent their nights enactingchemical weddings with the hope that eighteen-karat gold wouldresult and wondering if the philosopher's stone was really thelapis exillis, a wretched terra-cotta grail¡Xand my grail was inLia's belly.

"Yes," Lia said, runningher hand over her swelling, taut vessel, "here is where your goodprimal matter is steeping.

"Those people you saw atthe castle, what did they think happened in the vessel?"

"Oh, they thought thatmelancholy was grumbling in it, sul-ftirous earth, black lead, oilof Saturn, a Styx of purifications, distillations, pulverizations,ablutions, b'quefactions, submersions, terra foetida, stinkingsepulcher..."

"What are they,impotent? Don't they know that in the vessel our Thing ripens, allwhite and pink and beautiful?"

"They know, but for themyour dear little belly is also a metaphor, full ofsecrets..."

"There are no secrets,Pow. We know exactly how the Thing is formed, its little nerves andmuscles, its little eyes and spleens and pancreases..."

"Oh my God, more thanone spleen? What is it, Rosemary's baby?"

"I was speaking ingeneral. But of course we'll have to be ready to love it even if ithas two heads."

"Of course! I'll teachit to play duets: trumpet and clarinet...No, then it would needfour hands, and that's too many. But, come to think about it, he'dmake a great pianist. A concerto for two left hands? Nothing to it!Brr....But then, my Diabolicals also know that on that day, in thehospital, there will be born the Great Work, the White, the Rebis,the androgyne..."

"That's all we need.Listen. We'll call him Giulio, or her Giulia, after my grandfather.What do you say?"

"I like it.Good."

If I had only stoppedthere. If I had only written a white book, a good grimoire, for allthe adepts of Isis Unveiled, explaining to them that the secretumsecretorum no longer needed to be sought, that the book of lifecontained no hidden meaning; it was all there, in the bellies ofall the Lias of the world, in the hospital rooms, on straw pallets,on riverbanks, and that the stones in exile and the Holy Grail werenothing but screaming monkeys with their umbilical cord stilldangling and the doctor giving them a slap on the ass. And that theUnknown Superiors, in the eyes of the Thing, were only me and Lia,and the Thing would immediately recognize us, without having to goask that old fool de Maistre.

But no. We, thesardonic, insisted on playing games with the Diabolicals, onshowing them that if there had to be a cosmic plot, we could inventthe most cosmic of all.

Serves you right, I saidto myself that other evening. Now here you are, waiting for whatwill happen under Foucault's Pendulum.

78

Surely this monstroushybrid comes not from a mother's womb but from an Ephialtes, anIncubus, or some other horrendous demon, as though spawned in aputrid and venomous fungus, son of Fauns and Nymphs, more devilthan man.

¡XAthanasius Kircher,Mundus Subterraneus, Amsterdam, Jansson, 1665, II, pp.279-280

That day, I wanted tostay home¡XI had a presentiment¡Xbut Lia told me to stop acting theprince consort and go to work. "There's time, Pow; it won't be bornyet. I have to go out, too. Run along."

I had almost reached myoffice when Signer Salon's door opened. The old man appeared in hisyellow apron. I couldn't avoid greeting him, and he asked me tocome inside. I had never seen his laboratory.

It must have been anapartment once, but Salon had had all the dividing wallsdemolished, and what I saw was a cave, vast, hazy. For some obscurearchitectural reason, this wing of the building had a mansard roof,and the light entered obliquely. I don't know whether the glasspanes were dirty or frosted, or if Salon had installed shades tokeep out the direct sun, or if it was the heap of objects on allsides proclaiming a fear of spaces left empty, but the light in thecave was late dusk. The room was divided by old pharmacy shelves inwhich arches opened to passages, junctions, perspectives. Thedominant color was brown: the objects, the shelves, the tables, thediffuse blend of daylight and the patchy illumination from oldlamps. My first impression was of having entered an instrumentmaker's atelier, abandoned from the time of Stradivarius, withyears of accumulated dust on the striated bellies of thelutes.

Then, as my eyesgradually adjusted, I saw that I was in a petrified zoo. A bear cubwith glassy eyes climbed an artificial bough; a dazed and hieraticowl stood beside me; on the table in front of me was a weasel¡Xormarten or skunk; I couldn't tell. Behind it was a prehistoricanimal, feline, its bones showing. It might have been a puma, aleopard, or a very big dog. Part of the skeleton had already beencovered with straw and paste, and it was all supported by an ironarmature.

"The Great Dane of arich lady with a soft heart," Salon said with a snicker, "who wantsto remember it as it was in the days of their conjugal life. Yousee? You skin the animal, on the inside of the skin you smeararsenic soap, then you soak and bleach the bones...Look at thatshelf and you'll see a great collection of spinal columns and ribcages. A lovely ossuary, don't you think? You connect the boneswith wire, reconstruct the skeleton, mount it on an armature. Tostuif it, I use hay, papier-mache, or plaster. Finally you fit theskin back on.