First, Danzig, to have under his control the classical places of the Teutonic group. Next he conquered Paris, to get his hands on the Pendulum and the Eiffel Tower, and he contacted the synarchic groups and put them into the Vichy government. Then he made sure of the neutrality—in effect, the cooperation—of the Portuguese group. His fourth objective was, of course, England; but we know that wasn’t easy. Meanwhile, with the African campaigns, he tried to reach Palestine, but here again he failed. Then he aimed at the dominion of the Paulician territories, by invading the Balkans and Russia.
“When Hitler had four-sixths of the Plan in his hands, he sent Hess on a secret mission to England to propose an alliance. The Baconians, however, refused. He had another idea: those who were holding the most important part of the secret must be his eternal enemies the Jews. He didn’t look for them in Jerusalem, where few were left. The Jerusalemite group’s piece of the message wasn’t in Palestine anyway; it was in the possession of a group of the Diaspora. And so the Holocaust is explained.”
“How is that?”
“Just think for a moment. Suppose you wanted to commit genocide…”
“Excuse me,” Diotallevi said, “but this is going too far. My stomach hurts. I’m going home.”
“Wait, damn it. When the Templars were disemboweling the Saracens, you enjoyed yourself, because it was so long ago. Now you’re being delicate, like a petty intellectual. We’re remaking history; we can’t be squeamish.”
We let him continue, subdued by his vehemence.
“The striking thing about the genocide of the Jews is the lengthiness of the procedures. First they’re kept in camps and starved, then they’re stripped naked, then the showers, then the scrupulous piling up of the corpses, and the sorting and storing of clothes, the listing of personal effects….None of this makes sense if it was just a question of killing them.
It makes sense if it was a question of looking for something, for a message that one of those millions of people—the Jerusalemite representative of the Thirty-six Invisibles—was hiding in the hem of a garment, or in his mouth, or had tattooed on his body…. Only the Plan explains the inexplicable bureaucracy of the genocide! Hitler was searching the Jews for the clue that would allow him to determine, with the Pendulum, the exact point under the earth’s concave vault where the telluric currents converged.
“And now you see the beauty of the idea. The telluric currents become equated with the celestial currents. The hollow-earth theory gives new life to the age-old hermetic intuition, namely, that what lies beneath is equal to what lies above! The Mystic Pole coincides with the Heart of the Earth. The secret pattern of the stars is nothing other than the secret pattern of the subterranean passages of Agarttha.
There is no longer any difference between heaven and hell, and the Grail, the lapis exillis, is the lapis ex coelis, the philosopher’s stone, the terminal, the limit, the chthonian uterus of the empyrean! And if Hitler can identify that point in the hollow center of the earth, which is also the exact center of the sky, he will be Master of the World, whose king he is by right of race. And that’s why, to the very end, in the depths of his bunker, he thought he could still control the Mystic Pole.”
“Stop,” Diotallevi said. “Enough is enough. I’m sick.”
“He’s really sick. It’s not an ideological protest,” I said.
Belbo finally understood. Concerned, he went to Diotallevi, who was leaning against the desk, apparently on the verge of fainting. “Sorry, my friend. I got carried away. You’re sure it’s not anything I said? We’ve joked together for twenty years, you and I. Maybe you do have gastritis. Look, try a Merankol tablet and a hot-water bottle. Come, I’ll drive you home. Then you’d better call a doctor, have yourself looked at.”
Diotallevi said he could take a taxi home, he wasn’t at death’s door yet. He just had to lie down. Yes, he would call a doctor, he promised. And it wasn’t the Holocaust business that had upset him; he had been feeling bad since the previous evening. Belbo, relieved, went with him to the taxi.
When he came back, he looked worried. “Now that I think about it, Diotallevi hasn’t been himself for several weeks. Those circles under his eyes … It’s not fair; I should have died of cirrhosis ten years ago, and here I am, the picture of health, whereas he lives like an ascetic and has gastritis or maybe worse. If you ask me, it’s an ulcer. To hell with the Plan. We’re not living right.”
“A Merankol will fix him up,” I said.
“Yes, and a hot-water bottle on his stomach. Let’s hope he acts sensibly.”
Qui operatur in Cabala … si errabit in opere aut non purificatus accesserit, deuorabitur ab Azazale.
—Pico della Mirandola, Conclusiones Magicae
Diotallevi’s condition took a decided turn for the worse in late November. He called the office to say he was going into the hospital. The doctor had told him there was nothing to worry about, but it would be a good idea to have some tests.
Belbo and I somehow connected Diotallevi’s illness with the Plan, which perhaps we had carried too far. It was irrational, but we felt guilty. This was the second time I seemed to be Belbo’s partner in crime. Once, we had remained silent together, withholding information from De Angelis; and now we had talked too much. We told each other this was silly, but we couldn’t shake off our uneasiness. And so, for a month or more, we did not discuss the Plan.
Meanwhile, after he had been out for two weeks or so, Diotallevi dropped by to tell us, in a nonchalant tone, that he had asked Garamond for sick leave. A treatment had been recommended to him. He didn’t go into details, but it involved his reporting to the hospital every two or three days, and it would leave him somewhat weak. I didn’t see how he could get much weaker; his face now was as white as his hair.
“And forget about those stories,” he said. “They’re bad for the health, as you’ll see. It’s the Rosicrucians’ revenge.”
“Don’t worry,” Belbo said to him, smiling. “We’ll make life really unpleasant for those Rosicrucians, and they’ll leave you alone. Nothing to it.” And he snapped his fingers.
The treatment lasted until the beginning of the new year. I was absorbed by my history of magic—the real thing, serious stuff, I said to myself, not our nonsense. Garamond came by at least once a day to ask for news of Diotallevi. “And please, gentlemen, let me know if any need arises, any problem, any circumstance in which I, the firm, can do something for our admirable friend. For me, he’s like a son—more, a brother—and thank heaven this is a civilized country, whatever people may say; we have a public health system we can be proud of.”
Agliè expressed concern, asked for the name of the hospital, and telephoned its director, a dear friend (who, moreover, happened to be the brother of an SFA with whom Agliè was on excellent terms). Diotallevi would be treated with special consideration.
Lorenza showed up often to ask for news. This should have made Belbo happy, but he took it as another indication that his prognosis was not good. Lorenza was there, but still elusive, because she wasn’t there for him.
Shortly before Christmas, I’d caught a snatch of their conversation. Lorenza was saying to him: “The snow is just right, and they have charming little rooms. You can do cross-country skiing, can’t you?” I concluded that they would be spending New Year’s Eve together. But one day after Epiphany, when Lorenza appeared in the corridor, Belbo said to her, “Happy New Year,” and dodged her attempt to give him a hug.
Leaving this place, we came to a settlement known as Milestre … where it is said that one known as the Old Man of the Mountain dwelled…. And he built, over high mountains surrounding a valley, a very thick and high wall, in a circuit of thirty miles, and it was entered by two doors, and they were hidden, cut into the mountain.
—Odorico da Pordenone, De rebus incognitis, Impressus Esauri, 1513, xxi, p. 15
One day, at the end of January, as I was walking along Via Marchese Gualdi, where I had parked my car, I saw Salon coming out of Manutius. “A little chat with my friend Agliè,” he said to me.
Friend? As I seemed to recall from the Piedmont party, Agliè was not fond of him. Was Salon snooping around Manutius, or was Agliè using him for some contact or other?
Salon didn’t give me time to ponder this; he suggested a drink, and we ended up at Pilade’s. I had never seen Salon in this part of town, but he greeted old Pilade as if they had known each other for years. We sat down. He asked me how my history of magic was progressing. So he knew about that, too. I prodded him about the hollow-earth theory and about Sebottendorf, the man Belbo had mentioned.
He laughed. “You people certainly draw your share of madmen. I’m not familiar with this business of the earth being hollow. As for Sebottendorf, now there was a character…. He gave Himmler and company some ideas that were suicidal for the German people.”
“What ideas?
“Oriental
