107

Dost thou see yon black dog, ranging through shoot and stubble? Meseems he softly coileth magic meshes, To be a sometime fetter round our feet... The circle narrows, now he’s near!

—Faust, ii, Without the City-Gate

What had happened during my absence, particularly in the days just before my return, I could deduce from Belbo’s files. But only one file, the last, was clear, containing ordered information; he had probably written it before leaving for Paris, so that I, or someone else, could read it. The other files, written for himself alone, as usual, were not easy to interpret. But having entered the private universe of his confidences to Abulafia, I was able to draw something from them.

It was early June. Belbo was upset. The doctors had finally accepted the idea that he and Gudrun were Diotallevi’s only relatives, and they talked. When the printers and proofreaders inquired about Diotallevi, Gudrun now answered with pursed lips, uttering a bisyllable in such a way that no vowel escaped. Thus the taboo illness was named.

Gudrun went to see Diotallevi every day. She must have disturbed him with those eyes of hers, glistening with pity. He knew, but was embarrassed that others knew. He spoke with difficulty. (Belbo wrote: “The face is all cheekbones.”) He was losing his hair, but that was from the therapy. (Belbo wrote: “The hands are all fingers.”)

In the course of one of their painful dialogs, Diotallevi gave Belbo a hint of what he would say to him on the last day: that identifying oneself with the Plan was bad, that it might be evil. Even before this, perhaps to make the Plan objective and reduce it again to its purely fictional dimension, Belbo had written it down, word for word, as if it were the colonel’s memoirs. He narrated it like an initiate communicating the final secret. This, I believe, was to be a cure: he was returning to literature, however second-rate, to that which was not life.

But on June 10, something bad must have happened. The notes are confused; all I have is conjectures.

* * *

Lorenza asked him to drive her to the Riviera, where she had to see a girlfriend and collect something or other, a document, a notarized deed, some nonsense that could just as well have been sent by mail. Belbo agreed, dazzled by the idea of spending a Sunday at the sea with her.

They went to the place—I haven’t been able to figure out exactly where, perhaps near Portofino. Belbo’s description was all emotion, tensions, dejections, moods; it contained no landscapes. Lorenza did her errand while Belbo waited in a cafe. Then she said they could go and eat fish in a place on a bluff high above the sea.

After this, the story becomes fragmentary. There are snatches of dialog without quotation marks, as if transcribed at white heat lest a series of epiphanies fade. They drove as far as they could, then continued on foot, taking those toilsome Ligurian paths along the coast, surrounded by flowers, to the restaurant. When they were seated, they saw, on the table next to theirs, a card reserving it for Conte Aglie.

What a coincidence, Belbo must have said. A nasty coincidence, Lorenza replied; she didn’t want Aglifc to know she was there, and with Belbo. Why not, what was wrong with that? What gave Aglie the right to be jealous? Right? No, it was a matter of taste; Aglie had invited her out today and she’d told him she was busy. Belbo didn’t want her to look like a liar, did he? She wouldn’t look like a liar; she was in fact busy, she had a date with Belbo. Was that something to be ashamed of? Not ashamed of, but she had her own rules of tact, if Belbo didn’t mind.

They left the restaurant, started back up the path, but Lorenza suddenly stopped; she saw some people arriving. Belbo didn’t know them. Friends of Aglie, she said, and she didn’t want them to see her. A humiliating situation: she leaned against the railing of a little bridge over a ravine full of olive trees, a newspaper in front of her face, as if she were consumed by a sudden interest in current events. Belbo stood ten paces away, smoking, as if he were just passing by.

A friend of Aglie walked past. Lorenza said that if they continued along the path, they were bound to run into Aglie himself. To hell with this, Belbo said. So what? Lorenza said he was insensitive. The solution: Get to the car without taking the path, cut across the slopes. A breathless flight over a series of sunbaked terraces, and Belbo lost the heel of a shoe. Lorenza said, You see how much more beautiful it is this way? Of course you’re out of breath; you shouldn’t smoke so much.

They reached the car, and Belbo said they might as well go back to Milan. No, Lorenza said, Aglie might be late, we might meet him on the highway, and he knows your car. It’s such a lovely day, let’s cut through the interior. It must be charming, and we’ll get to the Autostrada del Sole and have supper along the Po somewhere, near Pavia.

Why there, and what do you mean, cut through the interior? There’s only one solution; look at the map. We’d have to climb into the mountains after Uscio, then cross the Apennines, stop at Bobbio, and from there go on to Piacenza. You’re crazy! Worse than Hannibal and the elephants. You have no sense of adventure, she said, and anyway, think of all the charming little restaurants we’ll find in those hills. Before Uscio there’s Manuelina’s, which has at least twelve stars in the Michelin and all the fish you could want.

Manuelina’s was full, with a line of customers eyeing the tables where coffee was being served. Never mind, Lorenza said, a few kilometers higher we’ll find a hundred places better than this. They found a restaurant at two-thirty, in a wretched village that, according to Belbo, even the army maps were ashamed to record, and they ate overcooked pasta with a sauce made of canned meat. Belbo asked Lorenza what was behind all this, because it was no accident that she had made him take her to the very place where Aglie would be: she wanted to provoke someone, either Aglie or him, but he couldn’t figure out which of the two it was. She asked him if he was paranoid.

After Uscio they tried a mountain pass and, as they were going through a village that looked like Sunday afternoon in Sicily during the reign of the Bourbons, a big black dog came to a stop in the middle of the road, as if it had never seen an automobile before. Belbo hit it. The impact did not seem great, but as soon as they got out, they saw that the poor animal’s belly was red with blood, and some strange pink things (intestines?) were sticking out, and the dog was whimpering and drooling. Some villeins gathered, and soon it was like a town meeting. Belbo asked who the dog’s owner was, he would pay. The dog had no owner. The dog represented perhaps ten percent of the population of that Godforsaken place, but they knew it only by sight. Some said they should fetch the carabiniere sergeant, who would fire a shot, and that would be that.

As they were looking for the sergeant, a lady arrived, declaring herself an animal lover. I have six cats, she said. This is a dog, not a cat, Belbo said, and he’s dying, and I’m in a hurry. Cat or dog, you should have a heart, the lady said. No sergeant. Somebody must be brought from the SPCA, or from the hospital in-the next town. Maybe the animal can be saved.

The sun was beating down on Belbo, on Lorenza, on the car, on the dog, and on the bystanders; it seemed to have no intention of setting. BeJbo felt as if he were in his pajamas but unable to wake up; the lady was implacable, the sergeant couldn’t be found, the dog went on bleeding and panting and making weak noises. He’s whimpering, Belbo said, and then, with Eliotlike detachment: He’s ending with a whimper. Of course he’s whimpering, the lady said; he’s suffering, poor darling, and why couldn’t you look where you were going?

The village underwent a demographic boom; Belbo, Lorenza, and the dog had become the entertainment of that gloomy Sunday. A little girl with an ice-cream cone came over and asked if they were the people from the TV who were organizing the Miss Ligurian Apennine contest. Belbo told her to beat it or he’d do to her what he did to the dog. The girl started crying. The local doctor arrived, said the girl was his daughter, and Belbo didn’t realize to whom he was talking. In a rapid exchange of apologies and introductions, it transpired that the physician had published a Diary of a Village Doctor with the famous Manutius Press in Milan. Belbo incautiously said that he was magna pars of that press. The doctor insisted that he and Lorenza stay for supper. Lorenza fumed, nudged Belbo: Now we’ll end up in the papers, the diabolical lovers. Couldn’t you keep your mouth shut?

The sun still beat down as the church bell rang compline. We’re in Ultima Thule, Belbo muttered through clenched teeth: sun six months of the year, from midnight to midnight, and I ‘m out of cigarettes. The dog confined itself to suffering, and nobody paid it any further attention. Lorenza said she was having an asthma attack. Belbo was sure by now that the cosmos was a practical joke of the Demiurge. Finally it occurred to him that they could take the car and look for help in the nearest town. The animal-loving lady agreed: they should go, they should hurry, she trusted a gentleman from a publishing house that published poetry, she herself was a great admirer of Khalil Gibran.

Belbo drove off and, when they reached the nearest town, cynically drove through it, as Lorenza cursed all the animals with which the Lord had befouled the earth from the first through the fifth day. Belbo agreed, and went so far as to curse the work of the sixth day, too, and perhaps also the rest on the seventh, because this was the most ill-starred Sunday he had ever lived through.

They began to cross the Apennines. On the map it looked easy, but it took them hours. They didn’t stop at Bobbio, and toward evening they arrived at Piacenza. Belbo was tired, but at least he could have supper with Lorenza. He took a double room in the only available hotel, near the station. When they went upstairs, Lorenza said she wouldn’t sleep in such a place. Belbo said they’d look for something else, if she would just give him time to go down to the bar and have a martini. He found nothing but cognac, domestic. When he went back up to the room, Lorenza wasn’t there. At the front desk he found a message: “Darling, I’ve discovered a marvelous train for Milan. I’m leaving. See you next week.”

Belbo rushed to the station: the track was empty. Just like a Western.

He had to spend the night in Piacenza. He looked for a paperback thriller, but the station newsstand was closed. All he could find in the hotel was a Touring Club magazine.

It had an article on Apennine passes like the one he had just crossed. In his memory—faded, as if the day’s events had happened long ago—they were arid, sun-baked, dusty, scattered with mineral flotsam. But on the glossy pages of the magazine they were dream country, to return to even on foot, to be savored step by step. The Samoas of Seven Seas Jim.

How can a man rush to his own destruction simply because he runs over a dog? Yet that’s how it was. That night in Piacenza, Belbo decided to withdraw once more into the Plan, where he would suffer no more defeats, because there he was the one who decided who, how, and when.

That must also have been the night he decided to avenge himself on Aglie,,even if he didn’t have a clear reason. He would put him into the Plan without Aglie’s knowing. It was typical of Belbo to seek revenges of which he would be the only witness. Not out of modesty, but because he distrusted the ability of others to appreciate them. Slipped into the Plan, Aglie would be annulled, would dissolve in smoke like the wick of a candle. Unreal as the Templars of Provins, the Rosicrucians: as unreal as Belbo himself.

It shouldn’t be difficult, Belbo thought. We’ve cut Bacon and Napoleon down to size: why not Aglie? We’ll send him out looking for the map, too. I freed myself of Ardenti and his memory by putting him into a fiction better than his own. The same will happen with Aglie.

I believe he really believed this; such is the power of frustrated desire. The file ended—it could not have been otherwise—with the quotation required of all those whom life has defeated: Bin ich ein Gott?

108

What is the hidden influence behind the press, behind all the subversive movements going on around us? Are there several Powers at work? Or is there one Power, one invisible group directing all the rest—the circle of the real Initiates!

—Nesta Webster,  Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, London, Boswell, 1924, p.348

Maybe he would have forgotten his decision. Maybe it would have been enough for him just to write it. Maybe, if he had seen Lorenza again at once, he would have been caught up by desire, and desire would have forced him to come to terms with life. But, instead, that Monday afternoon, Aglie appeared in his office, wafting exotic cologne, smiling as he handed over some manuscripts to be rejected, saying he had read them during a splendid weekend at the seashore. Belbo, seized once more by rancor, decided to taunt Aglie—by giving him a glimpse of the magic bloodstone.

Assuming the manner of Boccaccio’s Buifamalcco, he said that for more than ten years he had been burdened by an occult secret. A manuscript, entrusted to him by a certain Colonel Ar-denti, who claimed to be in possession of the Plan of the Templars... The colonel had been abducted or killed, and his papers had been taken. Garamond Press had been left with a red-herring text, deliberately erroneous, fantastic, even puerile, whose sole purpose was to let others know that .the colonel had seen the Provins message and Ingolf’s final notes, the notes In-golf’s murderers were still looking for. But there was also a very slim file, containing ten pages only, but those ten pages were the authentic text, the one really found among Ingolf’s papers. They had remained in Belbo’s hands.

What a curious story—this was Aglie’s reaction—do tell me more. Belbo told him more. He told him the whole Plan, just as we had conceived it, as if it were all contained in that remote manuscript. He even told him, in an increasingly cautious and confidential tone, that there was also a policeman, by the name of De Angelis, who had arrived at the brink of the truth but had come up against the hermetic—no other way to describe it— silence of Belbo himself, keeper of mankind’s greatest secret: a secret that boiled down to the secret of the Map.

Here he paused, in a silence charged with unspoken meaning, like all great pauses. His reticence about the final truth guaranteed the truth of its premises. For those who really believed in a secret tradition, he calculated, nothing was louder than silence.

“How interesting, how extremely interesting!” Aglie said, taking the snuffbox from his vest, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. “And... and the map?”

Belbo thought: You old voyeur, you’re getting aroused; serves you right. With all your Saint-Germain airs, you’re just another petty charlatan living off the shell game, and then you buy the Brooklyn Bridge from the first charlatan who’s a bigger charlatan than you are. Now I’ll send you on a wild-goose chase looking for maps, so you’ll vanish into the bowels of the earth, carried away by the telluric currents, until you crack your head against the transoceanic monolith of some Celtic valve.

And, very circumspectly, he replied: “In the manuscript, of course, there was also the map, or, rather, a precise description of the map, of the original. It’s surprising; you can’t imagine how simple the solution is. The map was within everyone’s grasp, in full view; why, thousands of people have passed it every day, for centuries. And the method of orientation is so elementary that you just have to memorize the pattern and the map can be reproduced on the spot, anywhere. So simple and so unexpected... Imagine—this is just to give you an idea—it’s as if the map were inscribed in the Pyramid of Cheops, its elements displayed for everyone to see, and for centuries people have read and reread and deciphered the pyramid, seeking other allusions, other calculations, completely overlooking its incredible, splendid simplicity. A masterpiece of innocence. And fiendish cunning. The Templars of Provins were wizards.”

“You pique my curiosity. Would you allow me to see it?”

“I must confess I destroyed everything: the ten pages, the map. I was frightened. You understand, don’t you?”

“You mean to tell me you destroyed a document of such importance?...”

“I destroyed it. But, as I said, the revelation was of an absolute simplicity. The map is here,” and Belbo touched his forehead. “For over ten years I’ve carried it with me, for over ten years I’ve carried the secret here,” and he touched his forehead again, “like an obsession, for I fear the power that would be mine if I put forth my hand and grasped the heritage of the Thirty-six Invisibles. Now you realize why I persuaded Garamond to publish Isis Unveiled and the History of Magic. I’m waiting for the right contact.” Then, more and more carried away by the role he had taken on, and to put Aglie definitively to the test, he recited, word for word, Arsene Lupin’s ardent speech at the conclusion of Z,’’Aiguille Creuse: “There are moments when my power makes my head swim. I am drunk with dominion.”

“Come now, dear friend,” Aglie said. “What if you have given excessive credence to the daydreams of some fanatic? Are you sure the text was authentic? Why don’t you trust my experience in these matters? If you only knew how many revelations of this sort I’ve heard in my life, and how many proved, with my help, to be unfounded. I can boast some expertise at least— modest, perhaps, but precise—in the field of historical cartography. ‘‘

“Dr. Aglie,” Belbo said, “you would be the first to remind me that, once revealed, a mystic secret is no longer of any use. I have been silent for years; I can go on being silent.”

And he was silent. Aglie too, rogue or not, performed his role in earnest. He had spent his life amusing himself with impenetrable secrets, so he was quite convinced that Belbo’s lips would be sealed forever.

At that point Gudrun came in and told Belbo that the Bologna meeting had been set for Wednesday at noon. “You can take the morning Intercity,” she said.

“Delightful train, the Intercity,” Aglie said. “But you should reserve a seat, especially at this season.”

Belbo said that even if you boarded at the last moment, you could find something, perhaps in the dining car, where they served breakfast. “I wish you luck, then,” Aglie said. “Bologna. Beautiful city, but so hot in June...”

“I’ll be there only two or three hours. I have to discuss a text on ancient inscriptions. There are problems with the illustrations.” Then he fired his big gun: “I haven’t had my vacation yet. I’ll take it around the summer solstice. I may make up my mind to...You understand me. And I rely on your discretion. I’ve spoken to you as a friend.”

“I can keep silent even better than you. In any case, I thank you, most sincerely, for your trust.” And Aglie left.

From this encounter Belbo emerged confident: total victory of his astral narrative over the wretchedness and shame of the sublunar world.

The next day, he received a phone call from Aglie. “You must forgive me, dear friend. I have encountered a small contretemps. You know that, in a modest way, I deal in antique books. This evening I am to receive, from Paris, a dozen bound volumes, eighteenth-century, of a certain value, and I absolutely must deliver them to a correspondent of mine in Florence tomorrow. I would take them myself, but another engagement detains me here. I thought of this solution: you are going to Bologna. I’ll meet you at your train tomorrow, ten minutes before you leave, and hand you a small suitcase. You put it on the rack over your seat and leave it there when you arrive in Bologna. You might wait and get off last, to be sure no one takes it. In Florence, my correspondent will board the train while it’s standing in the station and collect the suitcase. It’s a nuisance for you, I know, but if you could render me this service, I’d be eternally grateful.”

“Gladly,” Belbo replied. “But how will your friend in Florence know where I’ve left the suitcase?”

“I have taken the liberty of reserving a seat for you, seat number 45, car 8. It’s reserved as far as Rome, so no one else will occupy it in Bologna or in Florence. You see, in exchange for the inconvenience I’m causing you, I make sure that you will travel comfortably and not have to make do in the dining car. I didn’t dare buy your ticket, of course, not wanting you to think I meant to discharge my indebtedness in such an indelicate fashion.”

A real gentleman, Belbo thought. He’ll send me a case of rare wine. To drink his health. Yesterday I wanted to dispatch him to the bowels of the earth and now I’m doing him a favor. Anyway, I could hardly refuse.

Wednesday morning, Belbo went to the station early, bought his ticket to Bologna, and found Aglie standing beside car 8 with the suitcase. It was fairly heavy but not bulky.

Belbo put the suitcase above seat number 45 and settled down with his bundle of newspapers. The news of the day was Berlin-guer’s funeral. A little later, a bearded gentleman came and occupied the seat next to his. Belbo thought he had seen the man before. (With hindsight, he thought it might have been at the party in Piedmont, but he wasn’t sure.) When the train left, the compartment was full.

Belbo read his paper, but the bearded passenger tried to strike up conversations with everybody. He began with remarks about the heat, the inadequacy of the air-conditioning, the fact that in June you never knew whether to wear summer things or between-seasons clothing. He observed that the best was a light blazer, just like Belbo’s, and he asked if it was English. Belbo said yes, it was English, from Burberry’s, and resumed his reading. “They’re the best,” the gentleman said, “but yours is particularly nice, because it doesn’t have those gold buttons that are so ostentatious. And, if I may say so, it goes very well with your maroon tie.” Belbo thanked him and reopened his paper. The gentleman went on talking with the others about the difficulty of matching ties with jackets, and Belbo continued reading. I know, he thought, they all think me rude, but I don’t take trains to establish human relationships. I have too much of that as it is.

Then the gentleman said to him, “What a lot of papers you read! And of every political tendency. You must be a judge or a politician.” Belbo replied that he was neither, but worked for a publishing firm that specialized in books on Arab metaphysics. He said this in the hope of terrifying his adversary. And the man was obviously terrified.

Then the conductor arrived. He asked Belbo why he had a ticket for Bologna and a seat reserved to Rome. Belbo said he had changed his mind at the last moment. “How lucky you are,” the bearded gentleman said, “to be able to make such decisions, according to how the wind blows, without having to count pennies. I envy you.” Belbo smiled and looked away. There, he said, now they all think I’m either a spendthrift or a bank robber.

At Bologna, Belbo stood up and prepared to get off. “Don’t forget your suitcase,” his neighbor said.

“No. A friend will collect it in Florence,” Belbo said. “For that matter, I’d be grateful if you’d keep an eye on it.”

“I will,” the bearded gentleman said. “Rest assured.”

Belbo returned to Milan toward evening, shut himself in his apartment with two cans of meat and some crackers, and turned on the TV. More Berlinguer, naturally. The news item about the train appeared at the end, almost as a footnote.

Late that morning on the Intercity between Bologna and Florence, a bearded gentleman had voiced suspicions after a passenger got off in Bologna leaving a suitcase on the luggage rack. True, the passenger had said someone would pick it up in Florence, but wasn’t that what terrorists always said? Furthermore, why had he reserved his seat to Rome when he was getting off in Bologna?

A heavy uneasiness spread among the other travelers in that compartment. Finally, the bearded passenger said he couldn’t bear the tension. It was better to make a mistake than to die, and he alerted the chief conductor. The chief conductor stopped the train and called the Railway Police. The train was stopped in the mountains; the passengers milled anxiously along the tracks; the bomb squad arrived... The experts opened the suitcase and found a timer and explosive, set for the hour of arrival in Florence. Enough to wipe out a few dozen people.

The police were unable to find the bearded gentleman. Perhaps he had changed cars and got off in Florence because he didn’t want to end up in the newspapers. The police were appealing to him to get in touch with them.

The other passengers remembered, with unusual precision, the man who had left the suitcase. He must have looked suspicious at first sight. He was wearing a blue English jacket without gold buttons, a maroon necktie; he was taciturn, and seemed to want to avoid attracting attention at all costs. But he had let slip the information that he worked for a paper, or a publisher, or for something having to do (the witnesses’ testimony varied) with physics, methane, or metempsychosis—but Arabs were definitely involved.

Police stations and carabiniere headquarters had been alerted. Anonymous phone calls were already coming in and being sifted by the investigators. Two Libyan citizens had been detained in Bologna. A police artist had made a sketch, which now occupied the whole screen. The drawing didn’t resemble Belbo, but Belbo resembled the drawing.

Belbo, plainly, was the man with the suitcase. But the suitcase had contained Aglie’s books. He called Aglie. There was no answer.

It was already late in the evening. He didn’t dare leave the house, so he took a pill to get some sleep. The next morning, he called Aglie again. Silence. He went out to buy the papers. Luckily the front page was still occupied by the funeral; the story about the train and the copy of the police sketch must be somewhere inside. He skulked back to his apartment, his collar turned up, then realized he was still wearing the blazer. At least he didn’t have on the maroon tie.

While he was trying once more to sort out what had happened, he received a call. A strange foreign voice, a slightly Balkan accent, mellifluous: a completely disinterested party acting out of pure kindness of heart. Poor Signor Belbo, the voice said, finding yourself compromised by such an unpleasant business. You should never agree to act as someone else’s courier without first checking the contents of the package. How awful it would be if someone were to inform the police that Signor Belbo was the unidentified occupant of seat number 45.

Of course, that extreme step could be avoided, if Belbo would only agree to cooperate. If he were to say, for example, where the Templars’ map was. And since Milan had become hot, because everyone knew the Intercity terrorist had boarded the train there, it would be prudent to deal with the matter in neutral territory: for example, Paris. Why not arrange to meet at the Librairie Sloane, 3 rue de la Manticore, in a week’s time? But perhaps Belbo would be better advised to set off at once, before anybody identified him. Librairie Sloane, 3 rue de la Manticore. At noon on Wednesday, June 20, he would find there a familiar face, that bearded gentleman with whom he had conversed so cordially on the train. The bearded gentleman would tell Belbo where to find other friends, and then, gradually, in good company, in time for the summer solstice, Belbo would tell what he knew, and the business would be concluded without any trauma. Rue de la Manticore, number 3: easy to remember.

109

Saint-Germain... very polished and witty... said he possessed every kind of secret....He often employed, for his apparitions, that famous magic mirror of his...and through its catoptric effects summoned up the usual, well-known shades. His contact with the other world was unquestioned.

—Le Coulteux de Canteleu, Les sectes et les societes secretes, Paris, Didier, 1863, pp. 170-171

Belbo was devastated. Everything was clear. Aglie believed his story, he wanted the map, he had set a trap for him, and now Belbo was in the man’s power. Either Belbo went to Paris, to reveal what he didn’t know (but he was the only one who knew he didn’t know it, since I had gone off without leaving an address, and Diotallevi was dying), or all the police forces of Italy would be after him.

But was it really possible that Aglie had stooped to such a sordid trick? Belbo should take that old lunatic by the collar and drag him to the police station; that was the only way to get out of this mess.

He hailed a taxi and went to the little house near Piazza Piola. Windows closed; on the gate, a real estate agency’s sign, FOR RENT. This was insane. Aglie was living here just last week; Belbo had telephoned him. He rang the bell of the house next door. “Oh, that gentleman? He moved out yesterday. I have no idea where he’s gone, I knew him only by sight, he was such a reserved person. Always traveling, I suppose.”

The only thing left was to inquire at the agency. They had never heard of Aglie. The house had been rented by a French firm. The rent was paid regularly through a bank. The lease was canceled overnight; the firm forfeited the deposit. All their communications, by letter, had been with a certain M. Ragotgky. That was all they knew.

It was impossible. Rakosky or Ragotgky, the colonel’s mysterious visitor, wanted by De Angelis and by Interpol, and here he was going around renting houses. In our story, Ardenti’s Rakosky was a reincarnation of Rachkovsky of the Okhrana, in other words, the inevitable Saint-Germain. What did he have to do with Aglie?

Belbo went to the office, sneaking upstairs like a thief, and locked himself in his room. He had to try to think things through.

It was enough to drive a man crazy, and Belbo suspected he had finally gone mad. There was no one he could confide in. While he was wiping the sweat from his face, and mechanically—without thinking—leafing through some manuscripts that had come in the day before, at the top of a page he suddenly saw Aglie’s name.

He looked at the title. A little work by some run-of-the-mill Diabolical, The True Story of the Comte de Saint-Germain. He read the page again. Quoting Charcornac’s biography, it said that Claude-Louis de Saint-Germain had gone variously by the names of Monsieur de Surmont, Count Soltikoff, Mr. Welldone, Marchese di Belmar, Rackoczi or Ragozki, and so on, but the real family names were Saint-Martin and Marquis of Aglie, the latter from an ancestral estate in Piedmont.

Good. Belbo could rest easy. Not only was he wanted for terrorism, not only was the Plan true, not only had Aglie disappeared in the space of two days, but, into the bargain, the count was no mythomane but the true and immortal Saint-Germain. And he had never done anything to conceal that fact. But no, the only true thing, in this growing whirlwind of falsehoods, was his name. No, even his name was false. Aglie wasn’t Aglie. But it didn’t matter who he really was, because he was acting, had been acting for years, like a character in the story we were to invent only later.

There was nothing Belbo could do. With the disappearance of Aglie, he couldn’t prove to the police that Aglie had given him the suitcase. And even if the police believed him, it would come out that he had received it from a man wanted for murder, a man he had been employing as a consultant for at least two years. Great alibi.

To grasp this whole story—melodramatic to begin with—and to make the police swallow it, another story had to be assumed, even more outlandish. Namely, that the Plan, which we had invented, corresponded in every detail, including the desperate final search for the map, to a real plan, which had already involved Aglie, Rakosky, Rachkovsky, Ragotgky, the bearded gentleman, and the Tres, not to mention the Templars of Provins. Which story in turn was based on the assumption that the colonel was right. Except that he was right by being wrong, because our Plan, after all, was different from his, and if his was true, then ours couldn’t be true, and vice versa, and therefore, if we were right, why had Rakosky, ten years ago, stolen a wrong document from the colonel?

Just reading, the other morning, what Belbo had confided to Abulafia, I felt like banging my head against the wall: to convince myself that the wall, at least the wall, was really there. I imagined how Belbo must have felt that day, and in the days that followed. But it wasn’t over yet.

Needing someone to talk to, he telephoned Lorenza. She wasn’t in. He was willing to bet he would never see her again. In a way, Lorenza was a creature invented by Aglie, and Aglie was a creature invented by Belbo, and Belbo no longer knew who had invented Belbo. He picked up the newspaper again. The one sure thing was that he was the man in the police drawing. To convince him further, at that moment the phone rang. For him again, in the office. The same Balkan accent, the same instructions. Meeting in Paris.

“Who are you, anyway?” Belbo shouted.

“We’re the Tres,” the voice replied, “and you know more about the Tres than we do.”

Belbo took the bull by the horns and called De Angelis. At headquarters they made difficulties; the inspector, they said, was no longer working there. When Belbo insisted, they gave in and put him through to some office.

“Ah, Dr. Belbo, what a surprise!” De Angelis said in a tone that suggested sarcasm. “You’re lucky you caught me. I’m packing my suitcases.”

“Suitcases?” Was that a hint?

“I’ve been transferred to Sardinia. A peaceful assignment, apparently.”

“Inspector De Angelis, I have to talk to you. It’s urgent. It’s about that business....”

“Business? What business?”

“The colonel. And the other thing... Once, you asked Ca-saubon if he’d heard any mention of the Tres. Well, I have. And I have things to tell you, important things.”

“I don’t want to hear them. It’s not my case anymore. And it’s a little late in the day, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I admit it. I kept something from you years ago. But now I want to talk.”

“Not to me, Dr. Belbo. First of all, I should tell you that someone is surely listening to our conversation, and I want that someone to know that I refuse to hear anything and that I don’t know anything. I have two children, small children. And I’ve been told something could happen to them. To show me it wasn’t a joke, yesterday morning, when my wife started the car, the hood blew off. A very small charge, hardly more than a firecracker, but enough to convince me that if they want to, they can. I went to the chief, told him I’ve always done my duty, sometimes went beyond the call of duty, but I’m no hero. My life I’m willing to lay down, but not the lives of my wife and children. I asked for a transfer. Then I went and told everybody what a coward I am, and how I’m shitting in my pants. Now I’m saying it to you and to whoever’s listening to us. I’ve ruined my career, I’ve lost my self-respect, I’m a man without honor, but I’m saving my loved ones. Sardinia is very beautiful, I’m told, and I won’t even have to lay money aside to send the children to the beach in the summer. Good-bye.”

“Wait, I’m in trouble....”

“You’re in trouble? Good. When I asked for your help, you wouldn’t give it to me. Neither would your friend Casaubon. But now that you’re in trouble... Well, I’m in trouble, too. You’ve come too late. The police, as they say in the movies, are at the service of the citizen. Is that what you’re thinking? Then call the police, call my successor.”

Belbo hung up. Wonderful: they had even prevented him from turning to the one policeman who might have believed him.

Then it occurred to him that Signor Garamond, with all his acquaintances—prefects, police chiefs, high officials—could lend a hand. He rushed to him.

Garamond listened to his story affably, interrupting him with polite exclamations like “You don’t say,” “Of all things,” “Why, it sounds like a novel.” Then he clasped his hands, looked at Belbo with profound understanding, and said: “My boy, allow me to call you that, because I could be your father— well, perhaps not your father, because I’m still a young man, more, a youthful man, but your older brother, yes, if you’ll allow me. I’ll speak to you from the heart. We’ve known each other for so many years. It seems to me that you’re overexcited, at the end of your tether, nerves shot, more, tired. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it; I know you give body and soul to the Press, and one day this must be considered also in what I might call material terms, because that never does any harm. But, if I were you, I’d take a vacation.

“You say you find yourself in an embarrassing situation. To be frank, I might say—not to dramatize—but it would be unpleasant for Garamond Press, too, if one of its editors, its best editor, were involved in any kind of dubious business. You tell me that someone wants you to travel to Paris. It’s not necessary to go into details; I believe you, naturally. So go to Paris. Isn’t it best to clear things up at once? You say you find yourself— how shall I put it?—on conflictual terms with a gentleman like Count Aglie. I don’t want to know the details, or what happened between the two of you, but I wouldn’t brood too much on that similarity of names you mentioned. The world is full of people named German, or something similar. Don’t you agree? If Aglie sends you word to come to Paris and we’ll clear everything up, well then, go to Paris. It won’t be the end of the world. In human relationships, it’s always best to be straightforward, frank. Go to Paris, and if you have anything on your chest, don’t hold it back. What’s in your heart should be on your lips. What do all these secrets matter!

“Count Aglie, if I’ve understood correctly, complains because you don’t want to tell him where some map is, some paper or message or whatever, something you have and are making no use of, whereas maybe our good friend Aglie needs it for some scholarly reason. We’re in the service of culture, aren’t we? Or am I wrong? Give it to him, .this map, this atlas, this chart—I don’t even want to know what it is. If it means so much to him, he must have his reasons, surely worthy of respect; a gentleman is always a gentleman. Go to Paris, shake hands, and it’s done. All right? And don’t worry more than necessary. You know I’m always here.” Then he pressed the intercom: “Signora Grazia... ah, not there. She’s never around when you need her. You have your troubles, my dear Belbo, but if you only knew mine. Good-bye now. If you see Signora Grazia in the corridor, send her to me. And get some rest: don’t forget.”

Belbo went out. Signora Grazia wasn’t in her office, but on her desk he saw that the red light of Garamond’s personal line was on: Garamond was calling someone. Belbo couldn’t resist (I believe it was the first time in his life he committed such an indelicacy); he picked up the receiver and listened in on the conversation. Garamond was saying: “Don’t worry. I think I’ve convinced him. He’ll come to Paris... Only my duty. We belong to the same spiritual knighthood, after all.”

So Garamond, too, was part of the secret. What secret? The one that only he, Belbo, could reveal. The one that did not exist.

It was evening by then. He went to Pilade’s, exchanged a few words with someone or other, drank too much. The next morning, he sought out the only friend he had left, Diotallevi. He went to ask the help of a dying man.

Their last conversation he reported feverishly on Abulafia. It’s a summary. I was unable to tell how much was Diotallevi’s and how much was Belbo’s, because in both cases it was the murmuring of one who speaks the truth because a   knows the time has passed for playing with illusion.

110

And so it happened that Rabbi Ismahel ben Elisha and his disciples, who were studying the book Yesirah and mistook he movements and walked backward, sank into the earth, to its navel, tnanks to the strength of letters.

-Pseudo Saadya, Commentary on the Sefer Yesirah

He had never seen his friend so white. Diotall vi had hardly any hair now on his head or eyebrows or lashes. He looked like a billiard ball.

“Forgive me,” Belbo said. “Can we discuss my situation?”

“Go ahead. I don’t have a situation. Only needs.”

“I heard they have a new therapy. These things devour twenty-year-olds, but at fifty it’s slower; there’s time to find a cure.”

“Speak for yourself. I’m not fifty yet. My body is still young. I have the privilege of dying more quickly. Bv it’s hard for me to talk. Tell me what you have to say, so I can rest.”

Obedient, respectful, Belbo told him the whole story.

Then Diotallevi, breathing like the Thing in the science-fiction movie, talked. He had, also, the transparency of the Thing, that absence of boundary between exterior and interior, between skin and flesh, between the light fuzz on his belly, discernible in the gap of his pajamas, and the mucilaginous tangie of viscera that only X rays or a disease in an advanced state can make visible.

“Jacopo, I’m stuck here in a bed. I can’t decide whether what you’re telling me is happening only inside your head, or whether it’s happening outside. But it doesn’t matter. Whether you’ve gone crazy or the world has makes no difference. In either case, someone has mixed and shuffled the words o. the Book more than was right.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve sinned against the Word, against that which created and sustains the world. Now you are punishe.. for it, as I am punished for it. There’s no difference between you and me.”

A nurse came in and put water on his table. She told Belbo not to tire him, but Diotallevi waved her away: “Leave us alone. I have to tell him. The Truth. Do you know L Truth?”

“Who, me? What a question, sir...”

 “Then go. I have to tell my friend something important. Now listen, Jacopo. Just as man’s body has limbs and joints and organs, so does the Torah. And as the Torah, so a man’s body. You follow me?”

“Yes.”

“Rabbi Meir, when he was learning from Rabbi Akiba, mixed vitriol in the ink, and the master said nothing. But when Rabbi Meir asked Rabbi Ismahel if he was doing the right thing, the rabbi said to him: Son, be cautious in your work, because it is divine work, and if you omit one letter or write one letter too many, you destroy the whole world....We tried to rewrite the Torah, but we paid no heed to whether there were too many letters or too few....”

“We were joking....”

“You don’t joke with the Torah.”

“We were joking with history, with other people’s writings...”

“Is there a writing that founds the world and is not the Book? Give me a little water. No, not the glass; wet that cloth... Thanks. Now listen. Rearranging the letters of the Book means rearranging the world. There’s no getting away from it. Any book, even a speller. People like your Dr. Wagner, don’t they say that a man who plays with words and makes anagrams and violates the language has ugliness in his soul and hates his father?”

“But those are psychoanalysts. They say that to make money. They aren’t your rabbis.”

“They’re all rabbis. They’re all saying the same thing. Do you think the rabbis, when they spoke of the Torah, were talking about a scroll? They were talking about us, about remaking our body through language. Now, listen. To manipulate the letters of the Book takes great piety, and we didn’t have it. But every book is interwoven with the name of God. And we anagram-matized all the books of history, and we did it without praying. Listen to me, damn it. He who concerns himself with the Torah keeps the world in motion, and he keeps in motion his own body as he reads, studies, rewrites, because there’s no part of the body that doesn’t have an equivalent in the world. Wet the cloth for me... Thanks. If you alter the Book, you alter the world; if you alter the world, you alter the body. This is what we didn’t understand.

“The Torah allows a word to come out of its coffer; the word appears for a moment, then hides immediately. It is revealed only for a moment and only to its lover. It’s a beautiful woman who hides in a remote chamber of her palace. She waits for one whose existence nobody knows of. If another tries to take her, to put his dirty hands on her, she dismisses him. She knows her beloved; she opens the door just a little, shows herself, and immediately hides again. The word of the Torah reveals itself only to him who loves it. But we approached books without love, in mockery....”

Belbo again moistened his friend’s lips with the cloth. “And so?”

“So we attempted to do what was not allowed us, what we were not prepared for. Manipulating the words of the Book, we attempted to construct a golem.”

“I don’t understand....”

“You can’t understand. You’re the prisoner of what you created. But your story in the outside world is still unfolding. I don’t know how, but you can still escape it. For me it’s different. I am experiencing in my body everything we did, as a joke, in the Plan.”

“Don’t talk nonsense. It’s a matter of cells....”

“And what are cells? For months, like devout rabbis, we uttered different combinations of the letters of the Book. GCC, CGC, GCG, CGG. What our lips said, our cells learned. What did my cells do? They invented a different Plan, and now they are proceeding on their own, creating a history, a unique, private history. My cells have learned that you can blaspheme by ana-grammatizing the Book, and all the books of the world. And they have learned to do this now with my body. They invert, transpose, alternate, transform themselves into cells unheard of, new cells without meaning, or with meaning contrary to the right meaning. There must be a right meaning and a wrong meaning; otherwise you die. My cells joke, without faith, blindly.

“Jacopo, while I could still read, during these past months, I read dictionaries, I studied histories of words, to understand what was happening in my body. I studied like a rabbi. Have you ever reflected that the linguistic term ‘metathesis’ is similar to the oncological term ‘metastasis’? What is metathesis? Instead of ‘clasp’ one says ‘claps.’ Instead of ‘beloved’ one says ‘be-voled.’ It’s the temurah. The dictionary says that metathesis means transposition or interchange, while metastasis indicates change and shifting. How stupid dictionaries are! The root is the same. Either it’s the verb metatithemi or the verb methistemi. Metatithemi means I interpose, I shift, I transfer, I substitute, I abrogate a law, I change a meaning. And methistemi? It’s the same thing: I move, I transform, I transpose, I switch cliches, I take leave of my senses. And as we sought secret meanings beyond the letter, we all took leave of our senses. And so did my cells, obediently, dutifully. That’s why I’m dying, Jacopo, and you know it.”

“You talk like this because you’re ill...”

“I talk like this because finally I understand everything about my body. I’ve studied it day after day, I know what’s happening in it, but I can’t intervene; the cells no longer obey. I’m dying because I convinced myself that there was no order, that you could do whatever you liked with any text. I spent my life convincing myself of this, I, with my own brain. And my brain must have transmitted the message to them. Why should I expect them to be wiser than my brain? I’m dying because we were imaginative beyond bounds.”

“Listen, what’s happening to you has no connection with our Plan.”

“It doesn’t? Then explain what’s happening to you. The world is behaving like my cells.”

He sank back, exhausted. The doctor came in and whispered to Belbo that it was wrong to submit a dying man to such stress.

Belbo left, and that was the last time he saw Diotallevi.

Very well, he wrote, the police are after me for the same reason that Diotallevi has cancer. Poor friend, he’s dying, and I, who don’t have cancer, what am I doing? I’m going to Paris to find the principle of neoplasm.

But he didn’t give in immediately. He stayed shut up in his apartment for four days, reviewed his files sentence by sentence, to find an explanation. Then he wrote out this account, a final testament, so to speak, telling it to himself, to Abulafia, to me, or to anyone else who was able to read it. And finally, Tuesday, he left.

I believe Belbo went to Paris to say to them there was no secret, that the real secret was to let the cells proceed according to their own instinctive wisdom, that seeking mysteries beneath the surface reduced the world to a foul cancer, and that of all the people in the world, the most foul, the most stupid person was Belbo himself, who knew nothing and had invented everything. Such a step must have cost him dear, but he had accepted for too long the premise that he was a coward, and De Angelis had certainly shown him that heroes were few.

In Paris, after the first meeting, Belbo must have realized They wouldn’t believe him. His words were too undramatic, too simple. It was a revelation They wanted, on pain of death. Belbo had no revelation to give, and—his final cowardice—he feared death. So he tried to cover his tracks, and he called me. But They caught him.

111

C’est une le^on par la suite. Quand votre ennemi se reproduira, car il n’est pas ii son dernier masque, congediez-le brusquement, et surtout n’allez pas le chercher dans les grottes.

—Jacques Cazotte, Le diable amoureux, 1772, from a page suppressed in later editions

Now, in Belbo’s apartment, as I finished reading his confessions, I asked myself: What should I do? No point going to Garamond. De Angelis had left. Diotallevi had said everything he had to say. Lia was far off, in a place without a telephone. It was six in the morning, Saturday, June 23, and if something was going to happen, it would happen tonight, in the Conservatoire. I had to decide quickly.

Why—I asked myself later, in the periscope—didn’t you pretend nothing had happened? You had before you the texts of a madman, a madman who had talked with other madmen, including a last conversation with an overexcited (or overde-pressed) dying friend. You weren’t even sure Belbo had called you from Paris. Maybe he was talking from somewhere a few kilometers outside Milan, or maybe from the booth on the corner. Why involve yourself in a story that was imaginary and that didn’t concern you anyway?

This was the question I set myself in the periscope, as my feet were growing numb and the light was fading, and I felt the unnatural yet very natural fear that anyone would feel at night, alone, in a deserted museum. But early that morning, I had felt no fear. Only curiosity. And, perhaps, duty, friendship.

I told myself that I, too, should go to Paris. I wasn’t quite sure why, but I couldn’t desert Belbo now. Maybe he was counting on me to slip, under cover of night, into Jhe cave of the Thugs, and, as Suyodhana was about to plunge the sacrificial knife into his heart, to burst into the underground temple with my sepoys, their muskets loaded with.grapeshot, and carry him to safety.

Luckily, I had a little money on me. In Paris I got into^a taxi and told the driver to take me to rue de la Manticore. He grumbled, cursed; the street couldn’t be found even in those guides they have. In fact, it turned out to be an alley no wider than the aisle of a train. It was in the neighborhood of the old Bievre, behind Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre. The taxi couldn’t even enter it; the driver left me at the corner.

Uneasily, I entered the alley. There were no doorways. At a certain point the street widened a little, and I came to a bookshop. Why it had the number 3 I don’t know, since there was no number 1 or 2, or any other street number. It was a grimy little shop, lighted by a single bulb. Half of the double door served as a display case. Its sides held perhaps a few dozen books, indicating the shop’s specialties. On a shelf, some pendulums, dusty boxes of incense sticks, little amulets, Oriental or South American, and tarot decks of diverse origin.

The interior was no more welcoming: a mass of books on the walls and on the floor, with a little table at the back, and a bookseller who seemed put there deliberately, so that a writer could write that the man was more decrepit than his books. This person, his nose in a big handwritten ledger, was taking no interest in his customers, of which at the moment there were only two, and they raised clouds of dust as they drew out old volumes, nearly all without bindings, from teetering shelves, and began reading them, giving no impression of wanting to buy.

The only space not cluttered with shelves was occupied by a poster. Garish colors, a series of oval portraits with double borders, as in the posters of the magician Houdini. “Le Petit Cirque de PIncroyable. Madame Olcott et ses liens avec 1’Invisible.” An olive-skinned, mannish face, two bands of black hair gathered in a knot at the nape. I had seen that face before, I thought. “Les Derviches Hurleurs et leur danse sacree. Les Freaks Mig-nons, ou Les Petits-fils de Fortunio Liceti.” An assortment of pathetic, abominable little monsters. “Alex et Denys, les Geants d’Avalon. Theo, Leo et Geo Fox, les Enlumineurs de 1’Ecto-plasme...”

The Librairie Sloane truly supplied everything from the cradle to the grave; it even advertised healthy entertainment, a suitable place to take the children before grinding them up in the mortar. I heard a phone ring. The shopkeeper pushed aside a pile of papers until he found the receiver. “Oui, monsieur,” he said, “c’est bien ca.” He listened for a few minutes, nodded, then assumed a puzzled look, or at least it was the pretense of puzzlement, on account of those present, as if everybody could hear what he was hearing and he didn’t want to assume responsibility for it. Then he took on that shocked expression of a Parisian shopkeeper when you ask for something he doesn’t have in his shop, or a hotel clerk when there are no rooms available. “Ah, non, monsieur. Ah, ca... Non, non, monsieur, c’est pas notre oulot. Ici, vous savez, on vend des livres, on peut bien vous conseiller sur des catalogues, mais ca... II s’agit de problemes tres personnels, et nous...Oh, alors, il y a—sais pas, moi— des cures, des... oui, si vous voulez, des exorcistes. D’accord, je le sais, on connait des confreres qui se pretent... Mais pas nous. Non, vraiment la description ne me suffit pas, et quand meme... Desole’, monsieur. Comment? Oui...si vous voulez. C’est un endroit bien connu, mais ne demandez pas mon avis. C’est bien ca, vous savez, dans ces cas, la confiance c’est tout. A votre service, monsieur.”

The other two customers left. I felt ill at ease but steeled myself and attracted the old man’s attention with a cough. I told him I was looking for an acquaintance, a friend who, I thought, often stopped by here: Monsieur Aglie. Again the man had the shocked look he had had while on the telephone. Perhaps, I said, he didn’t know him as Aglie, but as Rakosky or Soltikoff or... The bookseller looked at me again, narrowing his eyes, and remarked coldly that I had friends with curious names. I told him never mind, it was not important, I was merely inquiring. Wait, he said; my partner is arriving and he may know the person you are looking for. Have a seat, please; there’s a chair in the back, there. I’ll just make a call and check. He picked up the phone, dialed a number, and spoke in a low voice.

Casaubon, I said to myself, you’re even stupider than Belbo. What are you waiting for? For Them to come and say, Oh, what a fine coincidence, Jacopo Belbo’s friend as well; come, come along, yes, you too....

I stood up abruptly, said good-bye, and left. In a minute I was out of rue de la Manticore, in another alley, then at the Seine. Fool! I said to myself. What did you expect? To walk in, find Aglie, take him by the lapels, and hear him apologize and say it was all a misunderstanding, here’s your friend, we didn’t touch a hair on his head. And now they know that you’re here, too.

It was past noon, and that evening something would take place in the Conservatoire. What was I to do? I turned into rue Saint-Jacques, every now and then looking over my shoulder. An Arab seemed to be following me. But what made me think he was an Arab? The thing about Arabs is that they don’t look like Arabs, or at least not in Paris. In Stockholm it would be different.

I passed a hotel, went in, asked for a room, got a key. As I was going upstairs, wooden stairs with a railing, from the second-floor landing the desk was still visible and I saw the presumed Arab enter. Then I noticed that in the corridor there were other people who could have been Arabs. Of course, that neighborhood was full of little hotels for Arabs. What did I expect?

I went into the room. It was decent; there was even a telephone. Too bad I didn’t know anyone I could call.

I dozed fitfully until three. Then I washed my face and headed for the Conservatoire. Now there was nothing else for me to do but enter the museum, stay on after closing, and wait for midnight.

Which I did. And a few hours before midnight, I found myself in the periscope, waiting.

Nezah, for some interpreters, is the Sefirah of endurance, forbearance, constant patience. In fact, a test lay ahead of us. But for other interpreters, it is victory. Whose victory? Perhaps, in this story full of the defeated, of the Diabolicals mocked by Belbo, of Belbo mocked by the Diabolicals, of Diotallevi mocked by his cells, I was—for the moment—the only victorious one. Lying in wait in the periscope, I knew about the others, but the others didn’t know about me. The first part of my scheme had gone according to plan.

And the second? Would it, too, go according to plan, or would it go according to the Plan, which now was no longer mine?