“Don’t tell me that for each letter of each word you tried all twenty-one systems….”
“I had brains on my side, and luck. Since the shortest words have six letters, it’s obvious that only the first six are important and the rest are just for looks. Why six letters? Suppose Ingolf coded the first letter, then skipped one, then coded the third, then skipped two and coded the sixth. For the first letter I used wheel number i, for the third letter I used wheel number 2, and got a sentence. Then I tried wheel number 3 for the sixth letter, and got a sentence again. I’m not saying Ingolf didn’t use other letters, too, but three positive results are enough for me. If you want to, you can take it further.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense. What came out?”
“Look at the message again. I’ve underlined the letters that count.
Kuabris Defrabax Rexulon Ukkazaal Ukzaab Urpaefel
Taculbain Habrak Hacoruin Maquafel Tebrain Hmcatuin
Rokasor Himesor Argaabil Kaquaan Docrabax Reisaz
Reisabrax Decaiquan Oiquaquil Zaitabor Qaxaop Dugraq
Xaelobran Disaeda Magisuan Raitak Huidal Uscolda Arabaom
Zipreus Mecrim Cosmae Duquifas Rocarbis.
“Now, we know what the first message is: it’s the one about the thirty-six invisibles. Now listen to what comes out if you substitute the third letters, using the second wheel: chambre des demoiselles, Paiguille creuse.”
“But I know that, it’s—”
“‘En aval d’Etretat—La Chambre des Demoiselles—Sous le Fort du Fréfossé—Aiguille Creuse,’ the message deciphered by Arsène Lupin when he discovers the secret of the Hollow Peak! You remember: at Etretat, at the edge of the beach, stands the Aiguille Creuse, a natural castle, habitable inside, the secret weapon of Julius Caesar when he invaded Gaul, and later used by the kings of France. The source of Lupin’s immense power. And you know how Lupinologists are crazy about this story; they make pilgrimages to Etretat, they look for secret passages, they make anagrams of every word of Leblanc…. Ingolf was no less a Lupinologist than he was a Rosicrucianologist, and so code after code….”
“My Diabolicals could always argue that the Templars knew the secret of the peak, and therefore the message was written in Provins in the fourteenth century….”
“Of course; I realize that. But now comes the third message. Third wheel applied to the sixth letter of each word. Listen: ‘Merde j’en ai marre de cette steganographie.’ And this is modern French; the Templars didn’t talk like that. ‘Shit, I’m sick of this hermetic writing.’ That’s how Ingolf talked, and having given himself a headache coding all this nonsense, he got a final kick cursing in code what he was doing. But he was not without shrewdness. Notice that each of these three messages has thirty-six letters. Poor Pow, Ingolf was having fun, just like the three of you, and that imbecile colonel took him seriously.”
“Then why did Ingolf disappear?”
“Who says he was murdered? Ingolf got fed up living in Auxerre, seeing nobody but the pharmacist and a spinster daughter who whined all day. So maybe he went to Paris, pulled off a good deal selling one of his old books, found himself a buxom and willing widow, and started a new life. Like those men who go out to buy cigarettes, and the wives never see them again.”
“And the colonel?”
“Didn’t you tell me that not even that detective is sure they killed him? He got into some jam, his victims tracked him down, and he took to his heels. Maybe at this very moment he’s selling the Eiffel Tower to an American tourist and going under the name Dupont.”
I couldn’t give in all along the line. “All right, we started out with a laundry list. Yet we were clever enough, inventive enough, to turn a laundry list into poetry.”
“Your plan isn’t poetic; it’s grotesque. People don’t get the idea of going back to burn Troy just because they read Homer. With Homer, the burning of Troy became something that it never was and never will be, and yet the Iliad endures, full of meaning, because it’s all clear, limpid. Your Rosicrucian manifestoes are neither clear nor limpid; they’re mud, hot air, and promises. This is why so many people have tried to make them come true, each finding in them what he wants to find. In Homer there’s no secret, but your plan is full of secrets, full of contradictions.
For that reason you could find thousands of insecure people ready to identify with it. Throw the whole thing out. Homer wasn’t faking, but you three have been faking. Beware of faking: people will believe you. People believe those who sell lotions that make lost hair grow back. They sense instinctively that the salesman is putting together truths that don’t go together, that he’s not being logical, that he’s not speaking in good faith. But they’ve been told that God is mysterious, unfathomable, so to them incoherence is the closest thing to God. The farfetched is the closest thing to a miracle. You’ve invented hair oil. I don’t like it. It’s a nasty joke.”
This disagreement didn’t spoil our weeks in the mountains. I took long walks, read serious books, became closer to the child than I’d ever been. But between me and Lia there was something left unsaid. On the one hand, she had put me in a tight corner, and was sorry to have humiliated me; on the other, she wasn’t convinced that she had convinced me.
Indeed, I felt a pull to the Plan. I didn’t want to abandon it, I had lived with it too long.
A few days ago I got up early to catch the one train for Milan, and in Milan I received Belbo’s call from Paris, and I began this story, which for me is not yet finished.
Lia was right. We should have talked about it earlier. But I wouldn’t have believed her, all the same. I had experienced the creation of the Plan like the moment of Tiferet, the heart of the sefirotic body, the harmony of Rule and Freedom. Diotallevi had told me that Moses Cordovero warned: “He who because of his Torah becomes proud over the ignorant, that is, over the whole people of Yahweh, leads Tiferet to grow proud over Malkhut.” But what Malkhut is, the kingdom of this earth, in its dazzling simplicity, is something I understand only now—in time to grasp the truth; perhaps too late to survive the truth.
Lia, I don’t know if I will see you again. If not, the last image I have of you is half-asleep, under the blankets, a few days ago. I kissed you that morning, and hesitated before I left.
NEZAH
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 bi-syllable 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 dialogues, 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
