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

I repair the damage done by death and corruption.This owl¡Xdoesn't it seem alive to you?"

From then on, every liveowl would seem dead to me, consigned by Salon to a scleroticeternity. I regarded the face of that embalmer of animal pharaohs,his bushy eyebrows, his gray cheeks, and I could not decide whetherhe was a living being or a masterpiece of his own art.

The better to look athim, I took a step backward, and felt something graze my nape. Iturned with a shudder and saw I had set a pendulum inmotion.

A great disemboweledbird swayed, following the movement of the lance that pierced it.The weapon had entered the head, and through the open breast youcould see it pass where the heart and gizzard had once been, thenbranch out to form an upside-down trident. One, thicker prong wentthrough the now-emptied belly and pointed toward the ground like asword, while the two other prongs entered the feet and emergedsymmetrically from the talons. The bird swung, and the three pointscast their shadow on the floor, a mystic sign.

"A fine specimen of thegolden eagle," Salon said. "But I still have a few days' work to doon it. I was just choosing the eyes." He showed me a box full ofglass corneas and pupils, as if the executioner of Saint Lucy hadcollected the trophies of his entire career. "It's not always easy,as it is with insects, where all you need is a box and a pin. This,for example, has to be treated with formalin."

I smelled its morgueodor. "It must be an enthralling job," I said. And meanwhile I wasthinking of the living creature that throbbed in Lia's belly. Achilling thought seized' me. If the Thing dies, I said to myself, Iwant to bury it. I want it to feed the worms underground and enrichthe earth. That's the only way I'll feel it's stillalive...

Salon was still talking.He took a strange specimen from one of the shelves. It was aboutthirty centimeters long. A dragon, a reptile with black membranouswings, a cock's crest, and gaping jaws that bristled with tinysawlike teeth. "Handsome, isn't he? My own composition. I used asalamander, a bat, snake's scales...A subterranean dragon. I wasinspired by this..."

He showed me, on anothertable, a great folio volume, bound in ancient parchment, withleather ties. "It cost me a fortune. I'm not a bibliophile, butthis was something I had to have. It's the Mundus Subterraneus ofAthanasius Kircher, first edition, 1665. Here's the dragon.Identical, don't you think? It lives in the caves of volcanoes,that good Jesuit said, and he knew everything about the known, theunknown, and the nonexistent..."

"You think always of theunderground world," I said, recalling our conversation in Munichand the words I had overheard through the Ear ofDionysius.

He opened the volume toanother page, to an image of the globe, which looked like ananatomical organ, swollen and black, covered by a spider web ofluminescent, serpentine veins. "If Kircher was right, there aremore paths in the heart of the earth than there are on the surface.Whatever takes place in nature derives from the heat and steambelow..."

I thought of the BlackWork, of Lia's belly, of the Thing that was struggling to break outof its sweet volcano.

"...and whatever takesplace in the world of men is planned below."

"Does Padre Kircher saythat, too?"

"No. He concerns himselfonly with nature...But it is odd that the second part of this bookis on alchemy and the alchemists, and that precisely here, you see,there is an attack on the Rosicrucians. Why attack the Rosicruciansin a book on the underground world? Our Jesuit knew a thing or two;he knew that the last Templars had taken refuge in the undergroundkingdom ofAgarttha..."

"And they're stillthere, it seems," I ventured.

"They're still there,"Salon said. "Not in Agarttha, but in tunnels. Perhaps beneath us,right here. Milan, too, has a metro. Who decided on it? Whodirected the excavations?"

"Expert engineers, I'dsay."

"Yes, cover your eyeswith your hands. And meanwhile, in that firm of yours, you publishsuch books....How many Jews are there among yourauthors?"

"We don't ask ourauthors to fill out racial forms," I replied stiffly.

"You mustn't think me ananti-Semite. No, some of my best friends...I have in mind a certainkind of Jew...."

"What kind?"

"I know whatkind..."

79

He opened his coffer. Inindescribable disorder it contained collars, rubber bands, kitchenutensils, badges of different technical schools, even the monogramof the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and the Cross of the Legion ofHonor. On everything, in his madness, he saw the seal of theAntichrist, in the form of two linked triangles.

¡XAlexandre Chayla,"Serge A. Nilus et les Protocoles," La Tribune Juive, May 14, 1921,p.3

"You see," Salon wenton, "I was born in Moscow. And it was in Russia, when I was ayouth, that people discovered the secret Jewish documents thatsaid, in so many words, that to control governments it wasnecessary to work underground. Listen." He picked up a littlenotebook, in which he had copied out some quotations. " ¡¥Today'scities have metropolitan railroads and underground passages: fromthese we will blow up all the capitals of the world.' Protocols ofthe Elders of Zion, Document Number Nine!"

It occurred to me thatthe collection of spinal columns, the box with the eyes, the skinsstretched over armatures came from some extermination camp. But no,I was dealing with an elderly man nostalgic about the old days ofRussian anti-Semitism. "If I follow you, then, there's aconventicle of Jews¡Xsome Jews, not all¡Xwho are plottingsomething. But why underground?"

"That's obvious! Anyplotter must plot underground, not in the light of day. This hasbeen known from the beginning of time. Dominion over the worldmeans dominion over what lies beneath it. The subterraneancurrents."

I remembered a questionof Agile's in his study, and then the Druidesses in Piedmont, whocalled on telluric currents.

"Why did the Celts digsanctuaries in the heart of the earth, making tunnels thatcommunicated with a sacred well?" Salon continued. "The well goesdown into radioactive strata, as everyone knows. How wasGlastonbury built? And isn't the island of Avalon where the myth ofthe Grail originated? And who invented the Grail if not aJew?"

The Grail again, my God.But what grail? There was only one grail: my Thing, in contact withthe radioactive strata of Lia's womb, and perhaps now swimminghappily toward the