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

added: "It doesn't matterif it has no effect on you. We used to go there for the Angel'slunch on Easter Monday. Now you can reach it in the car in fiveminutes, but then we went on foot, and it was a pilgrimage."

55

I call a theatre [aplace in which] all actions, all words, all particular subjects areshown as in a public theatre, where comedies and tragedies areacted.

¡XRobert Fludd,Utriusque Cosmi Historia, Tomi Secundi Tractatus Primi SectioSecunda, Oppenheim (?), 1620 (?), p. 55

We arrived at the villa.Villa¡Xactually, a large farmhouse, with great cellars on theground floor, where Adeline Canepa¡Xthe quarrelsome tenant who haddenounced Uncle Carlo to the partisans¡Xonce made wine from thevineyards of the Covasso land. It had long beenunoccupied.

In a little peasanthouse nearby Adeline Canepa's aunt still lived¡Xa .very old woman,Belbo told us, who tended a little vegetable garden, kept a fewhens and a pig. The others were now long dead, uncle and aunt, theCanepas; only this centenarian remained. The land had been soldyears before to pay the inheritance taxes and other debts. Belboknocked at the door of the little house. The old woman appeared onthe threshold, took a while to recognize the visitor, then made agreat show of deference, inviting us in, but Belbo, after havingembraced and calmed her, cut the meeting short.

We entered the villa,and Lorenza gave cries of joy as she discovered stairways,corridors, shadowy rooms with old furniture. As usual, Belbo playedeverything down, remarking only that each of us has the Tara hedeserves, but he was clearly moved. He continued to visit thehouse, from time to time, he told us, but not often.

"It's a good place towork: cool in summer, and in winter the thick walls protect youagainst the cold, and there are stoves everywhere. Naturally, whenI was a child, an evacuee, we lived only in two side rooms at theend of the main corridor. Now I've taken possession of my uncle andaunt's wing. I work here, in Uncle Carlo's study." There was asecretaire with little space for a sheet of paper but plenty ofsmall drawers, both visible and concealed. "I couldn't put Abulafiahere," Belbo said. "But the rare times I come, I like to write byhand, as I did then." He showed us a majestic cupboard. "When I'mdead, remember this contains all my juvenilia, the poems I wrotewhen I was sixteen, the sketches for sagas in six volumes made ateighteen, and so on..."

"Let's see! Let's see!"Lorenza cried, clapping her hands and advancing with exaggeratedfeline tread toward the cupboard.

"Stop right where youare," Belbo said. "There's nothing to see. I don't even look at itmyself anymore. And, in any case, when I'm dead, I'll come back andburn everything."

"This place has ghosts,I hope," Lorenza said.

"It does now. In UncleCarlo's day, no; it was lots of fun then. Georgic. That's why Icome. It's wonderful working at night while the dogs bark in thevalley."

He showed us the roomswhere we would be sleeping: mine, Diotallevi's, Lorenza's. Lorenzalooked at her room, touched the old bed and its great whitecounterpane, sniffed the sheets, said it was like being in one ofher grandmother's stories, because everything smelled of lavender.Belbo said it wasn't lavender, it was mildew. Lorenza said itdidn't matter, and then, leaning against the wall, her hips thrustforward as if she were at the pinball machine, she asked, "Am Isleeping here by myself?"

Belbo looked away, thenat us, then away again. He made as if to leave and said: "We'lltalk about it later. In any case, if you want it, you have a refugeall your own." Diotallevi and I moved off, but we heard Lorenza askBelbo if he was ashamed of her. He said that if he hadn't offeredher the room, she would have asked him where she was supposed tosleep. "I made the first move, so you have a choice," he said. "Thewily Turk," she said. "In that case, I'll sleep here in my darlinglittle room." "Sleep where you want," Belbo said, irritated. "Butthe others are here to work. Let's go out on theterrace."

So we set to work on thebroad terrace, where a pergola stood, supplied with cold drinks andplenty of coffee. Alcohol forbidden till evening.

From the terrace wecould see the Bricco, and below it a large plain building with ayard and a soccer field¡Xall inhabited by multicolored littlefigures, children, it seemed to me. "It's the Salesian parishhall," Belbo explained. "That's where Don Tico taught me to play.In the band."

I remembered the trumpetBelbo had denied himself after the dream. I asked: "Trumpet orclarinet?"

He had a moment's panic."How did you...Ah, yes, I told you about the dream, the trumpet.Don Tico taught Tie the trumpet, but in the band I played thebombardon."

"What's abombardon?"

"Oh, that's all kidstuff. Back to work now."

But as we worked, Inoticed that he often glanced at that hall. I had the impressionthat he talked about other things as an excuse to look at it. Forexample, he would interrupt our discussion and say:

"Just down there wassome of the heaviest shooting at the end of the war. Here in ***there was a kind of tacit agreement between the Fascists and thepartisans. Two years in a row the partisans came down from thehills in spring and occupied the town, and the Fascists kept theirdistance and didn't make trouble. The Fascists weren't from aroundhere; the partisans were all local boys. In the event of a fight,they could move easily; they knew every cornfield and the woods andhedgerows. The Fascists mostly stayed holed up in the town andventured out only for raids. In winter it was harder for thepartisans to stay down in the plain: there was no place to hide,and in the snow they could be seen from a distance and picked offby a machine gun even a kilometer away. So they climbed up into thehigher hills. There, too, they knew the passes, the caves, theshelters. The Fascists returned to control the plain. But thatspring we were- on the eve of liberation, the Fascists were stillhere, and they were dubious about going back to the city, sensingthat the final blow would be delivered there, as it in fact was,around