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

seemed to achieve something, becauseRadio Moscow fell silent, but then, at the most magical moment, itcame on again, with a drunken Cossack song, the kind they dance towith their behinds scraping the ground. Brambilla invoked theClavicula Salomonis, risked self-immolation by burning a parchmenton a tripod, summoned several divinities of the temple of Karnak,testily asked to be placed on the cubic stone of Yesod, andinsistently called out for "Familiar 39," who must have beenfamiliar enough to the audience, since a shiver ran through thehall. One woman sank into a trance, her eyes rolling back untilonly the whites were visible. People called for a doctor, butBrambilla involved the Power of the Penta-cles, and the neophyte,who had meanwhile sat down on the fake fauteuil, began to writheand groan. Brambilla hovered over her, anxiously asking questionsof her, or, rather, of Familiar 39, who, I suddenly realized, wasCagliostro himself. And now came the disturbing part, because thepathetic girl seemed to be in real pain: she trembled, sweated,bellowed, and began to speak in broken phrases of a temple and adoor that must be opened. She said a vortex of power was beingcreated, and we had to ascend to the Great Pyramid. Brambilla, upon the dais, became agitated; he banged the gong and called Isis ina loud voice. I was enjoying the performance until I heard thegirl, still sighing and moaning, say something about six seals, aone-hundred-and-twenty-year wait, and thirty-six invisibles. Now,there could be no doubt: she was talking about the message ofProvins. I waited to hear more, but the girl slumped back,exhausted. Brambilla stroked her brow, blessed the audience withhis thurible, and proclaimed the rite over.

I was slightly awed, andalso eager to understand. I tried to move closer to the girl, whoin the meantime had come to her senses, slipped into a scruffyovercoat, and was on her way out through the rear exit. I was aboutto touch her on the shoulder, when I felt someone grasp my arm. Iturned and it was Inspector De Angelis, who told me to let her go:he knew where to find her. He invited me out for coffee. I went, asif he had caught me doing something wrong, which in a sense he had.At the cafe he asked me what I was doing there and why I had triedto approach the girl. This irritated me. We aren't living in adictatorship, I said. I can approach anyone I choose. He apologizedand explained that, although the Ar-denti investigation had nopriority, they had tried to reconstruct the two days he had spentin Milan before his meeting at Garamond and with the mysteriousRakosky. A year after Ardenti's disappearance, the police had foundout, by sheer luck, that someone had seen him leaving the Picatrixoffices in the company of the psychic girl, who, incidentally, wasof interest to De Angelis because she lived with an individual notunknown to the narcotics squad.

I told him I was thereby chance, and I had been struck by the fact that the girl hadspoken a phrase about six seals, which I had heard from thecolonel. He remarked how strange it was that I could remember soclearly what the colonel said two years ago, yet, at the time, Ihad spoken only of some vague talk about the treasure of theTemplars. I replied that the colonel had indeed said that thetreasure was protected by six seals of some kind, but I hadn'tconsidered this an important detail because all treasures areprotected by seals, usually seven, and by gold bugs. He observedthat if all treasures were protected by gold bugs, he couldn't seewhy I should have been struck ty what the girl had said. I askedhim to stop treating me like a suspect, and he laughed and changedhis tone. He said he didn't find it strange that the girl had saidwhat she did, because Ardenti must have talked to her about hisfantasies, perhaps trying to use her to establish some astralcontact, as they say in those circles. A psychic, he went on, waslike a sponge, a photographic plate with an unconscious that mustlook like an amusement park. The Picatrix bunch probably give her abrainwashing all year round, so it was not unlikely that once in atrance¡Xbecause the girl was in earnest, wasn't faking, and therewas something wrong with her head-she would see images that hadbeen impressed on her long ago.

But two days later DeAngelis dropped in at the office to say that, curiously enough,when he went to see the girl the day after the ceremony, she wasgone. The neighbors said nobody had seen her since the afternoonbefore the evening of the ceremony. His suspicions were aroused, sohe entered the apartment and found it torn to pieces: sheets on thefloor, pillows in one corner, trampled newspapers, emptied drawers.No sign of her. Or of her boyfriend, or roommate or whatever youwanted to call him.

He told me that if Iknew anything more, I'd be wise to talk, because it was strange howthe girl had disappeared into thin air, and he could think of onlytwo reasons: either somebody realized that De Angelis had her undersurveillance, or it was noticed that one Jacopo Belbo had tried totalk to her. The things she had said in the trance might thereforehave concerned something serious, some unfinishedbusiness.

They¡Xwhoever theywere¡Xhadn't realized she knew so much.

"Now suppose somecolleague of mine gets it into his head that you killed her," DeAngelis added with a beautiful smile.

"You can see we haveevery interest in working together." I almost lost my temper, andGod knows I don't do that often. I asked him why a person who's nothome is assumed to have been murdered, and he asked if I rememberedwhat happened to the colonel. Then I told him that if she had beenkilled, or kidnapped, it must have happened that evening, when Iwas with him. He asked how I could be so sure of that, since we hadsaid good-bye around midnight and he had no way of knowing what hadhappened after that. I asked him if he was serious, and he saidwhat, hadn't I ever read a detective story? Didn't I know that