Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum (64 page)

"Count," Ardenti said,
"the prisoner is lying. It is humiliating for me to say this¡Xbut
honor above all. The story I confided to him is not the story the
Mystic Legates told me. The interpretation of the message¡Xit's
true, I came into possession of a message, but I didn't hide that
from you, years ago, in Milan¡Xthe interpretation is different....I
wouldn't have been capable of reading it as the prisoner has read
it, and so, at that time, I sought help. And, I must say, I
received no encouragement, only distrust, defiance, and
threats...." Perhaps he was going to say more, but as he stared at
Aglie, he stared also at the Pendulum, which was acting on him like
a spell. As if hypnotized, he sank to his knees and said only,
"Forgive me, because I do not know.''

"You are forgiven,
because you know you do not know," Aglie said. "And so, brothers,
the prisoner has knowledge that none of us has. He knows even who
we are; in fact, we learned who we are through him. We must
proceed: it will soon be dawn. While you remain here in meditation,
I will withdraw once more, to wrest the revelation from
him."

"Ah non, monsieur le
comte!" Pierre stepped into the hemi-cycle, his pupils dilated.
"For two days you have talked with him, tete-a-tete, and he has
seen nothing, said nothing, heard nothing, like the three monkeys.
What more do you wish to demand, this night? No, no. Let it be
here. Here, before all of us!"

"Calm yourself, my dear
Pierre. I have had brought here, this night, a woman I consider the
most exquisite incarnation of the Sophia, the mystic bond between
the world of error and the Superior Ogdoad. Do not ask me how or
why, but in her presence the man will speak. Tell them who you are,
Sophia."

And Lorenza, like a
somnambulist, as if it were an effort to utter the words, said: "I
am...the saint and the prostitute."

"Ah, that is to laugh,"
Pierre said. "We have here the creme de l'initiation and we call in
a pute. No; the man must be brought immediately before the
Pendule!"

"Let's not be childish,"
Aglie said. "Give me an hour. What makes you think he would speak
here, before the Pendulum?"

"He will speak as he is
undone. Le sacrifice humain!" Pierre shouted to the nave. And the
nave, in a loud voice, repeated: "Le sacrifice humain!"

Salon stepped forward.
"Count, our brother is not childish. He is right. We are not the
police...."

"You of all people say
this," Aglie quipped.

"We are not the police,"
Salon said, "and it is not fitting for us to proceed with ordinary
methods of inquiry. On the other hand, I do not believe that
sacrifices to the forces of the underground will be efficacious
either. If they had wanted to give us a sign, they would have done
so long ago. Another one knows, besides the prisoner, but he has
disappeared. This evening, we have the possibility of confronting
the prisoner with those who knew..." He smiled, staring at Aglie,
his eyes narrowing beneath their bushy brows. "And to make them
also confront us..."

"What do you mean,
Salon?" Aglie asked, in a voice that showed uncertainty.

"If Monsieur le Comte
permits, I will explain," a woman said. It was Madame Olcott: I
recognized her from the poster. Livid, in an olive garment, her
hair, black with oil, tied at the nape. The hoarse voice of a man.
In the Librairie Sloane I had recognized that face, and now I
remembered: she was the Dru-idess who had run toward us in the
clearing that night in Piedmont. "Alex, Denys, bring the prisoner
here."

She spoke in an
imperious tone. The murmuring in the nave expressed approval. The
two giants obeyed, trusting Lorenza to two Freaks Mignons. Aglie's
hands gripped the arms of his throne; he had been
outvoted.

Madame Olcott signaled
to her little monsters, and between the statue of Pascal and the
Obeissante three armchairs were placed. On them three individuals
were seated. The three were dark-skinned, small of stature,
nervous, with large white eyes. "The Fox triplets. You know them
well, Count. Theo, Leo, Geo, ready yourselves."

At that moment the
giants of Avalon reappeared, holding Ja-copo Belbo by the arms,
though he barely came up to their shoulders. My poor friend was
ashen, with several days' growth of beard; his hands were bound
behind his back and his shirt was open. Entering the smoky arena,
he blinked. He didn't seem surprised by the collection of
hierophants he saw before him; after the past few days, he was
probably prepared for anything.

He was surprised,
though, to see the Pendulum in its new position. The giants dragged
him to face Agile's seat. The only | sound was the swish of the
Pendulum as it grazed his back.

Briefly, Belbo turned,
and he saw Lorenza. Overwhelmed, he i started to call her, and
tried to free himself. But Lorenza, though she stared at him dully,
seemed not to recognize him.

From the far end of the
nave, near the ticket desk and the bookstall, a roll of drums was
heard, and the shrill notes of some flutes. Suddenly, the doors of
four automobiles opened, and four creatures emerged. I had seen
them before, too, on the poster for Le Petit Cirque.

Wearing fezlike felt
hats and ample black cloaks buttoned to the neck, Les Derviches
Hurleurs stepped from the automobiles like the dead rising from the
grave, and they squatted at the edge of the magic circle. In the
background a flute now played sweet music, and the four gently put
their hands on the floor and bowed their heads.

From the fuselage of
Breguet's plane, a fifth Derviche leaned out like a muezzin from a
minaret and began to chant in an unknown tongue, moaning and
lamenting as the drums began again, increasing in
intensity.

Crouched behind the
Brothers Fox, Madame Olcott whispered words of encouragement to
them. The three were slumped in their chairs, their hands clutching
the arms, their eyes closed. They began to sweat, and all the
muscles of their faces twitched.

Madame Olcott addressed
the assembly of dignitaries. "My excellent little brothers will now
bring into our midst three people who knew." She paused, then said:
"Edward Kelley, Heinrich Khunrath, and..." Another pause. "Comte de
Saint-Germain."

For the first time, I
saw Aglie make a wrong move. Out of control, he sprang from his
seat, flung himself toward the woman, narrowly avoiding the
trajectory of the Pendulum, as he cried: "Viper, liar, you know
that cannot be...." Then, to the nave: "It's an imposture! A lie!
Stop her!"

But no one moved except
Pierre, who went up and sat on the throne. "Proceed, madame," he
said.

Aglie, recovering his
sangfroid, stood aside, mingling with the others. "Very well," he
challenged. "Let's see, then."

Madame Olcott moved her
arm as if signaling the start of a race. The music grew shrill,
dissonant; the drumbeats lost their steady rhythm; the dancers, who
had already begun swaying back and forth, right and left, as they
squatted, got up now, threw off their cloaks, and held out their
arms wide, rigid, as if they were about to take flight. A moment of
immobility, and they began to spin in place, using the left foot as
a pivot, faces upraised, concentrated, vacant, and their pleated
tunics belled out as they pirouetted, making them look like flowers
caught in a hurricane.

Meanwhile, the mediums,
breathing hoarsely, seemed to knot up, their faces distorted, as if
they were straining, unsuccessfully, to defecate. The light of the
brazier dimmed. Madame Olcott's acolytes turned off the lanterns on
the floor, and now the church was illuminated only by the glow from
the nave.

And the miracle began to
take place. From Theo Fox's lips a whitish foam trickled, a foam
that seemed to thicken. A similar substance issued from the lips of
his brothers.

"Come, brothers," Madame
Olcott murmured, coaxed, "come, come. That's right,
yes...."

The dancers sang
brokenly, hysterically, they shook and bobbed their heads, they
shouted, men made convulsive noises, like death rattles.

The stuff emitted by the
mediums took on body, grew more substantial; it was like a lava of
albumin, which slowly expanded and descended, slid over their
shoulders, their chests, their legs with the sinuous movement of a
reptile. I could not tell now if it came from the pores of their
skin or their mouths, ears, and eyes. The crowd pressed forward,
pushing closer and closer to the mediums and the dancers. I lost
all fear: confident that I would not be noticed among them, I
stepped from the sentry box, exposing myself still more to the
fumes that spread and curled beneath the vaults.

Around the mediums, a
milky luminescence. The foam began to detach itself from them, to
assume ameboid shape. From the mass that came from one of the
mediums, a tip broke free, turned, and moved up along his body,
like an animal that intended to strike him with its beak. At the
end of it, two mobile knobs formed, like the horns of a giant
snail...

The dancers, eyes
closed, mouths frothing, did not cease their spinning, and they
began to revolve, as much as the space allowed, around the
Pendulum, miraculously doing this without crossing its trajectory.
Whirling faster and faster, they flung off their fezes, let their
long black hair stream out, and it seemed their heads were flying
from their necks. They shouted, like the dancers that evening in
Rio: Houu houu houuuuu...

The white forms acquired
definition: one of them grew vaguely human in appearance, another
went from phallus to ampule to alembic, and the third was clearly
taking on the aspect of a bird, an owl with great eyeglasses and
erect ears, the hooked beak of an old schoolmistress, a teacher of
natural sciences.

Madame Olcott questioned
the first form: "Kelley, is that you?''

From the form a voice
came. It was definitely not Theo Fox speaking. The voice, distant,
said in halting English: "Now... I do reveale a...a mighty Secret,
if ye marke it well..."

"Yes, yes," Madame
Olcott insisted.

The voice went on: "This
very place is call'd by many names... Earth... Earth is the lowest
element of all... When thrice ye have turned this Wheele about...
thus my greate Secret I have revealed...."

Theo Fox made a gesture
with his hand, as if to beg mercy. "No, hold on to it," Madame
Olcott said to him. Then she addressed the owl shape: "I recognize
you, Khunrath. What have you to tell us?"

The owl spoke:
"Hallelu... ¡¥aah... Hallelu... ¡¥aah... Hallelu...'aah...
Was..."

"Was?"

"Was helfen Fackeln
Licht... oder Briln...so die Leut... nicht sehen...
wollen..."

"We do wish," Madame
Olcott said. "Tell us what you know."

"Symbolon kosmou... ta
antra... kai tan enkosmion dun-ameon erithento... oi
theologoi..."

Leo Fox was also
exhausted. The owl's voice weakened, Leo's head slumped, the effort
to sustain the shape was too great. But the implacable Madame
Olcott told him to persevere and addressed the last shape, which
now had also taken on anthropomorphic features. "Saint-Germain,
Saint-Germain, is that you? What do you know?"

The shape began to hum a
tune. Madame Olcott called for silence. The musicians stopped, and
the dancers no longer howled, but they continued spinning, though
with increasing fatigue.

The shape was singing:
"Gentle love, this hour befriends me..."

"It's you; I recognize
you," Madame Olcott said invitingly. "Speak, tell us where,
what..."

The shape said: "II
etait nuit....La tete couverte du voile de lin... j'arrive, je
trouve un autel de fer, j'y place le rameau mysterieux... Oh, je
crus descendre dans un abime... des galeries composees de quartiers
de pierre noire... mon voyage souterrain..."

"He's a fraud, a fraud!"
Aglie cried. "Brothers, you all know these words. They're from the
Tres Sainte Trinosophie, I wrote it myself; anyone can read it for
sixty francs!" He ran to Geo Fox and began shaking him by the
arm.

"Stop, you imposter!"
Madame Olcott screamed. "You'll kill him!"

"And what if I do?"
Aglife shouted, pulling the medium off the chair.

Geo tried to support
himself by clinging to the form he had secreted, but it fell with
him and dissolved on the floor. Geo slumped in the sticky matter
that he continued to vomit, until he stiffened,
lifeless.

"Stop, madman," Madame
Olcott screamed, seizing Aglie. And then, to the other brothers:
"Stand fast, my little ones. They must speak still. Khunrath,
Khunrath, tell him you are real!"

Leo Fox, to survive, was
trying to reabsorb the owl. Madame Olcott went around behind him
and pressed her fingers to his temples, to bend him to her will.
The owl, realizing it was about to disappear, turned toward its
creator: "Phy, Phy Diabolos," it muttered, trying to peck his eyes.
Leo gave a gurgle, as if his jugular had been severed, and sank to
his knees. The owl disappeared in a revolting muck ("Phiii, phiii,"
it went), and into it, choking, the medium also fell, and was
still. Madame Olcott, furious, turned to Theo, who was doing his
best to hold on: "Speak, Kelley! You hear me?"