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 Angliè, even if he didn’t have a clear reason. He would put him into the Plan without Angliè’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, Angliè 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 Agliè? 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 Angliè.
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?
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, Agliè 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 Anglie—by giving him a glimpse of the magic bloodstone.
Assuming the manner of Boccaccio’s Buffamalcco, 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 Ardenti, 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 Ingolf’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 Agliè’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!” Agliè 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 Agliè definitively to the test, he recited, word for word, Arsene Lupin’s ardent speech at the conclusion of L’Aiguille Creuse: “There are moments when my power makes my head swim. I am drunk with dominion.”
“Come now, dear friend,” Agliè 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. Agliè,” 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. Agliè 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,” Agliè 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,” Agliè 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 Agliè 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 Agliè. “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
