While we spent our lives being ashamed. You tricked us, you didn’t represent purity; it was only adolescent acne. You made us feel like worms because we lacked the courage to face the Bolivian militia, and you started shooting a few poor bastards in the back while they were walking down the street. Ten years ago, we had to lie to get you out of jail; you lied to send your friends to jail. That’s why I like this machine: it’s stupid, it doesn’t believe, it doesn’t make me believe, it just does what I tell it. Stupid me, stupid machine. An honest relationship.”
“But I—”
“You’re innocent, Casaubon. You ran away instead of throwing stones, you got your degree, you didn’t shoot anybody. Yet a few years ago I felt you, too, were blackmailing me. Nothing personal, just generational cycles. And then last year, when I saw the Pendulum, I understood everything.”
“Everything?”
“Almost everything. You see, Casaubon, even the Pendulum is a false prophet. You look at it, you think it’s the only fixed point in the cosmos, but if you detach it from the ceiling of the Conservatoire and hang it in a brothel, it works just the same. And there are other pendulums: there’s one in New York, in the UN building, there’s one in the science museum in San Francisco, and God knows how many others. Wherever you put it, Foucault’s Pendulum swings from a motionless point while the earth rotates beneath it. Every point of the universe is a fixed point: all you have to do is hang the Pendulum from it.”
“God is everywhere?”
“In a sense, yes. That’s why the Pendulum disturbs me. It promises the infinite, but where to put the infinite is left to me. So it isn’t enough to worship the Pendulum; you still have to make a decision, you have to find the best point for it. And yet…”
“And yet?”
“And yet… You’re not taking me seriously by any chance, are you, Casaubon? No, I can rest easy; we’re not the type to take things seriously….Well, as I was saying, the feeling you have is that you’ve spent a lifetime hanging the Pendulum in many places, and it’s never worked, but there, in the Conservatoire, it works…. Do you think there are special places in the universe? On the ceiling of this room, for example? No, nobody would believe that. You need atmosphere. I don’t know, maybe we’re always looking for the right place, maybe it’s within reach, but we don’t recognize it. Maybe, to recognize it, we have to believe in it. Well, let’s go see Signor Garamond.”
“To hang the Pendulum?”
“Ah, human folly! Now we have to be serious. If you’re going to be paid, the boss must see you, touch you, sniff you, and say you’ll do. Come and let the boss touch you; the boss’s touch heals scrofula.”
Prince of Babylon, Knight of the Black Cross, Knight of Death, Sublime Master of the Luminous Ring, Priest of the Sun, Grand Architect, Knight of the Black and White Eagle, Holy Royal Arch, Knight of the Phoenix, Knight of Iris, Priest of Eleusis, Knight of the Golden Fleece.
—High grades of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite
We walked along the corridor, climbed three steps, went through a frosted-glass door, and abruptly entered another universe. The rooms I had seen so far were dark, dusty, with peeling paint, but this looked like a VIP lounge at an airport. Soft music, a plush waiting room with designer furniture, pale-blue walls decorated with photographs showing gentlemen who looked like Members of Parliament presenting Winged Victories to gentlemen who looked like senators. On a coffee table, as in a dentist’s office, were slick magazines, in casual disarray, with titles like Literature and Wit, The Poetic Athanor, The Rose and the Thorn, The Italic Parnassus, Free Verse. I had never seen any of them before, and I later found out why: they were distributed only to Manutius clients.
At first I thought these were the offices of the Garamond directors, but I soon learned otherwise. This was another publishing firm entirely. The Garamond lobby had a little glass case, dusty and clouded, displaying the latest publications, but the books were unassuming, with uncut pages and sober gray covers imitating French university publications. The paper was the kind that turned yellow in a few years, giving the impression that the author, no matter how young, had been publishing for a long time.
But here the glass case, lighted inside, displayed Manutius books, some of them opened to reveal bright pages. They had gleaming white covers sheathed in elegant transparent plastic, with handsome rice paper and clean print.
Whereas the Garamond catalog contained such scholarly series as Humanist Studies and Philosophia, the Manutius series were delicately, poetically named: The Flower Unplucked (poetry), Terra Incognita (fiction), The Hour of the Oleander (including Diary of a Young Girl’s Illness), Easter Island (assorted nonfiction, I believe), New Atlantis (the most recent release being Königsberg Revisited: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics Presented as Both a Transcendental System and a Science of the Phenomenal Noumenon). On every cover there was the firm’s logo: a pelican under a palm tree, with the D’Annunzian motto “I have what I have given.”
Belbo had been laconic: Signor Garamond owned two publishing houses. In the days that followed, I realized that the passageway between Garamond and Manutius was private and secret. The official entrance to Manutius Press was on Via Marchese Gualdi, the street in which the purulent world of Via Sincero Renato ceded to spotless façades, spacious sidewalks, lobbies with aluminum elevators. No one could have suspected that an apartment in an old Via Sincero Renato building might be joined, by a mere three steps, to a building on Via Marchese Gualdi.
To obtain permission for this, Signor Garamond must have had to perform feats of persuasion. I believe he had help from one of his authors, an official in the City Planning Bureau.
We were received promptly by Signora Grazia, bland and matronly, her designer scarf and suit the exact color of the walls. With a guarded smile she showed us into an office that recalled Mussolini’s.
The room was not so immense, but it suggested that hall in the Palazzo Venezia. Here, too, there was a globe near the door, and at the far end the mahogany desk of Signor Garamond, who seemed to be looking at us through reversed binoculars. He motioned us to approach, and I felt intimidated. Later, when De Gubernatis came in, Garamond got up and went to greet him, an act of cordiality that enhanced even more the publisher’s importance. The visitor first watches him cross the room, then crosses it himself, arm in arm with his host, and as if by magic the space is doubled.
Garamond waved us to seats opposite his desk. He was brusque but friendly: “Dr. Belbo speaks highly of you, Dr. Casaubon. We need good men. You realize, of course, we’re not putting you on the staff. Can’t afford it. But you’ll be well paid for your efforts. For your devotion, if I may say so, because I consider our work a mission.”
He mentioned a flat fee based on estimated hours of work; it seemed reasonable for those times. I accepted.
“Excellent, Casaubon.” Now that I was an employee, the title disappeared. “This history of metals,” he went on, “must be splendid—more, a thing of beauty. Popular, but scholarly, too. It must catch the reader’s imagination. An example. Here in the first draft there is mention of these spheres—what were they called? Yes, the Magdeburg hemispheres. Two hemispheres which, when put together and the air is pumped out, create a pneumatic vacuum inside.
Teams of draft horses are hitched to them and they pull in opposite directions. The horses can’t separate the hemispheres. This is scientific information. But it’s special, it’s picturesque. You must single it out from all the other information, then find the right image—a fresco, an oil, whatever—and we’ll give it a full page, in color.”
“There’s an engraving I know of,” I said.
“You see? Bravo! A whole page. Full color.”
“Since it’s an engraving, it’ll have to be in black and white,” I said. “Really? Fine, black and white it is. Accuracy above all. But against a gold background. It has to strike the reader, make him feel he’s there on the day the experiment was carried out. See what I mean? Science, realism, passion. With science you can grab the reader by the throat. What could be more dramatic than Madame Curie coming home one evening and seeing that phosphorescent glow in the dark? Oh, my goodness, whatever can that be? Hydrocarbon, golconda, phlogiston, whatever the hell they called it, and voila, Marie Curie invents X rays. Dramatize! But with absolute respect for the truth.”
“What connection do X rays have with metals?” I asked.
“Isn’t radium a metal?”
“Yes.”
“Well then. The entire body of knowledge can be viewed from the standpoint of metals. What did we decide to call the book, Belbo?”
“We were thinking of something sober, like Metals.”
“Yes, it has to be sober. But with that extra hook, that little detail that tells the whole story. Let’s see… Metals: A World History. Are there Chinese in it, too?”
“Yes.”
“World, then. Not an advertising gimmick: it’s the truth. Wait, I know: The Wonderful Adventure of Metals.”
It was at that moment Signora Grazia announced the arrival of Commendatore De Gubernatis. Signor Garamond hesitated, gave me a dubious look. Belbo made a sign, as if to say that I could
