A noise. Stop, return to reality. A taxi bearing down. With a leap I managed to tear myself from the magic girdle, I waved my arms, and was almost run over, because the driver braked only at the last moment, stopping as if with great reluctance. During the ride he explained that he, too, when he passed beneath it at night, found the Tower frightening, so he speeded up. “Why?” I asked him.
“Parce que … parce que ça fait peur, c’est tout.”
At my hotel, I had to ring and ring before the sleepy night porter came. I said to myself: You have to sleep now. The rest, tomorrow. I took some pills, enough to poison myself. Then I don’t remember.
Madness has an enormous pavilion
Where it receives folk from every region,
Especially if they have gold in profusion.
—Sebastian Brant, Das Narrenschiff, 1494, 46
I woke at two in the afternoon, dazed, catatonic. I remembered everything clearly, but didn’t know if what I remembered was true. My first thought was to run downstairs and buy the newspapers; then I told myself that even if a company of spahis had stormed the Conservatoire immediately after the event, the news wouldn’t have had time to appear in the morning papers.
Besides, Paris had other things on its mind that day. The desk clerk informed me as soon as I went down to look for some coffee. The city was in an uproar. Many Métro stations were closed; in some places the police were using force to disperse the crowds; the students were too numerous, they were going too far.
I found Dr. Wagner’s number in the telephone book. I tried calling, but his office was obviously closed on Sunday. Anyway, I had to go and check at the Conservatoire. It was open on Sunday afternoons.
In the Latin Quarter groups of people were shouting and waving flags. On the Ile de la Cité I saw a police barricade. Shots could be heard in the distance. This is how it must have been in ’68. At Sainte-Chapelle there must have been a confrontation, I caught a whiff of tear gas.
I heard people charging, I didn’t know if they were students or policemen; everybody around me was running. Some of us took refuge inside a fence behind a cordon of police, while there was some scuffling in the street. The shame of it: here I was with the aging bourgeoisie, waiting for the revolution to subside.
Then the way was clear, and I took back streets around the old Halles, until I was again in rue Saint-Martin. The Conservatoire was open, with its white forecourt, the plaque on the façade: “Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, established by decree of the Convention on 19 Vendémiaire, Year III … in the former priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, founded in the eleventh century.” Everything normal, with a little Sunday crowd ignoring the students’ kermesse.
I went inside—Sundays free—and everything was as it had been at five o’clock yesterday afternoon. The guards, the visitors, the Pendulum in its usual place … I looked for signs of what had happened, but if it had happened, someone had done a thorough cleaning. If it had happened.
I don’t recall how I spent the rest of the afternoon. Nor do I recall what I saw, wandering the streets, forced every now and then to turn in to an alley to avoid a scuffle. I called Milan, just to see, dialed Belbo’s number, then Lorenza’s. Then Garamond Press, which would of course be closed.
As I sit here tonight, all this happened yesterday. But between the day before yesterday and this night an eternity has passed.
Toward evening I realized that I hadn’t eaten anything. I wanted quiet, and a little comfort. Near the Forum des Halles I entered a restaurant that promised fish. There was too much fish. My table was directly opposite an aquarium. A universe sufficiently surreal to plunge me again into paranoia. Nothing is accidental. That fish seems an asthmatic Hesychast that is losing its faith and accusing God of having lessened the meaning of the cosmos.
Sabaoth, Sabaoth, how can you be so wicked as to make me believe you don’t exist? The flesh is covering the world like gangrene….That other fish looks like Minnie; she bats her long lashes and purses her lips into a heart shape. Minnie Mouse is Mickey’s fiancee. I eat a salade folle with a haddock tender as a baby’s flesh. With honey and pepper. The Paulicians are here. That one glides among the coral like Bréguet’s airplane, a leisurely lepidopteral fluttering of wings; a hundred to one he saw his homunculus abandoned at the bottom of an athanor, now with a hole in it, thrown into the garbage opposite Flamel’s house.
And now a Templar fish, all armored in black, looking for Noffo Dei. He grazes the asthmatic Hesychast, who navigates pensively, frowning, toward the Unspeakable. I look away. Across the street I glimpse the sign of another restaurant, Chez R … Rosie Cross? Reuchlin? Rosispergius? Rachkovskyragotgkyzarogi? Signatures, signatures…
Let’s see. The only way to discomfit the Devil is to make him believe you don’t believe in him. There’s no mystery in your nighttime flight across Paris, in your vision of the Tower. To come out of the Conservatoire after what you saw, or believe you saw, and to experience the city as a nightmare—that is normal. But what did I see in the Conservatoire?
I absolutely had to talk to Dr. Wagner. I don’t know why, but I had to. Talking was the panacea. The therapy of the word.
How did I pass the time till this morning? I went into a movie theater where they were showing The Lady from Shanghai by Orson Welles. When the scene with the mirrors came, it was too much for me, and I left. But maybe that’s not true, maybe I imagined the whole thing.
This morning I called Dr. Wagner at nine. The name Garamond enabled me to get past the secretary; the doctor seemed to remember me, and, impressed by the urgency in my voice, he said to come at once, at nine-thirty, before his regular appointments. He seemed cordial, sympathetic.
Did I dream the visit to Dr. Wagner, too? The secretary asked for my vital statistics, prepared a card, had me pay in advance. Luckily I had my return ticket.
An office of modest size, with no couch. Windows overlooking the Seine. To the left, the shadow of the Tower. Dr. Wagner received me with professional affability. I was not his publisher now, I was his patient. With a wide gesture he had me sit opposite him, at his desk, like a government clerk called on the carpet. “Et alors?” He said this, and gave his rotating chair a push, turning his back to me. He sat with his head bowed and hands clasped. There was nothing left but for me to speak.
I spoke, and it was like a dam bursting; everything came out, from beginning to end: what I thought two years ago, what I thought last year, what I thought Belbo had thought, and Diotallevi. Above all, what had happened on Saint John’s Eve.
Wagner did not interrupt once, did not nod or show disapproval. For all the response he made, he could have been fast asleep. But that must have been his technique. I talked and talked. The therapy of the word.
Then I waited for the word, his word, that would save me.
Wagner stood up very, very slowly. Without turning to me, he came around his desk and went to the window. He looked out, his hands folded behind his back, absorbed in thought.
In silence, for ten, fifteen minutes.
Then, still with his back to me, in a colorless voice, calm, reassuring: “Monsieur, vous etes fou.”
He did not move, and neither did I. After another five minutes, I realized that he wasn’t going to add anything. That was it. End of session.
I left without saying good-bye. The secretary gave me a bright smile, and I found myself once more in Avenue Elisee-Reclus.
It was eleven. I picked up my things at the hotel and rushed to the airport. I had to wait two hours. In the meantime, I called Garamond Press, collect, because I didn’t have a cent left. Gudrun answered. She seemed more obtuse than usual, I had to shout three times for her to say Si, oui, yes, that she would accept the call.
She was crying: Diotallevi had died Saturday night at midnight.
“And nobody, not one of his friends was at the funeral this morning. The shame of it! Not even Signor Garamond! They say he’s out of the country. There was only me, Grazia, Luciano, and a gentleman all in black, with a beard, side curls, and a big hat: he looked like an undertaker. God knows where he came from. But where were you, Casaubon? And where was Belbo? What’s going on?”
I muttered something in the way of an explanation and hung up. My flight was called, and I boarded the plane.
YESOD
The conspiracy theory of society … comes from abandoning God and then asking: “Who is in
