“Why? Have you found bombs on trains that … No, excuse me. That’s really not my business. But why did you say that to me, then?”
“Because I was hoping you’d know more than I do. Because perhaps I’m relieved to see you can’t make head or tail of it either. You say you have to read lunatics by the carload and you consider it a waste of time. I don’t. For me, the works of your lunatics—by ‘your’ I’m referring to you normal people—are important texts. What a lunatic writes may explain the thinking of the man who puts the bomb on the train. Or are you afraid of becoming a police informer?”
“No, not at all. Besides, looking for things in card catalogs is my business. If the right piece of information turns up, I’ll keep you in mind.”
As he rose from his chair, De Angelis dropped the last question: “Among your manuscripts … have you ever found any reference to the Tres?”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know. An organization, maybe. I don’t even know if it exists. I’ve heard it mentioned, and it occurred to me in connection with your lunatics. Say hello to your friend Belbo for me. Tell him I’m not keeping tabs on any of you. The fact is, I have a dirty job, and my misfortune is that I enjoy it.”
As I went home, I asked myself who had come out ahead. He had told me a number of things; I’d told him nothing. If I wanted to be suspicious, I could think perhaps that he had got something out of me without my being aware of it. But if you’re too suspicious, you fall into the psychosis of synarchic plots.
When I told Lia about this episode, she said: “If you ask me, he was sincere. He really did want to get it all off his chest. You think he can find anyone at police headquarters who will listen to him wonder whether Jeanne Canudo was right-wing or left? He only wanted to find out if it’s his fault he can’t understand it or if the whole thing is too difficult. And you weren’t able to give him the one true answer.”
“The one true answer?”
“Of course. That there’s nothing to understand. Synarchy is God.”
“God?”
“Yes. Mankind can’t endure the thought that the world was born by chance, by mistake, just because four brainless atoms bumped into one another on a slippery highway. So a cosmic plot has to be found—God, angels, devils. Synarchy performs the same function on a lesser scale.”
“Then I should have told him that people put bombs on trains because they’re looking for God?”
“Why not?”
The prince of darkness is a gentleman.
—Shakespeare, King Lear; III, iv
It was autumn. One morning I went to Via Marchese Gualdi, because I had to get Signor Garamond’s authorization to order some color photographs from abroad. I glimpsed Agliè in Signora Grazia’s office, bent over the file of Manutius authors, but I didn’t disturb him, because I was late for my meeting.
When our business was over, I asked Signor Garamond what Agliè was doing in the secretary’s office.
“The man’s a genius,” Garamond said. “An extraordinary mind, keen, learned. The other evening, I took him to dinner with some of our authors, and he made me look great. What conversation! What style! A gentleman of the old school, an aristocrat; they’ve thrown away the mold. What knowledge, what culture—no, more, what information! He told delightful anecdotes about characters of a century ago, and I swear it was as if he had known them personally. Do you want to hear the idea he gave me as we were going home? He said we shouldn’t just sit and wait for Isis Unveiled authors to turn up on their own.
It’s a waste of time and effort to read when you don’t even know whether the authors are willing to underwrite the expenses. Instead, we have a gold mine at our disposal: the list of all the Manutius authors of the last twenty years! You understand? We write to our old, glorious authors, or at least the ones who bought up their remainders, and we say to them: Dear sir, are you aware that we have inaugurated a series of works of erudition, tradition, and the highest spirituality? Would you, as an author of distinction and refinement, be interested in venturing into this terra incognita, et cetera, et cetera? A genius, I tell you.
I believe he wants us all to join him Sunday evening. Plans to take us to a castle, a fortress—no, more, a villa in the Turin area. It seems that extraordinary things are to happen there, a rite, a sabbath, where someone will make gold or quicksilver. It’s a whole world to be discovered, my dear Casaubon, even if, as you know, I have the greatest respect for science, the science to which you are devoting yourself with such passion.
Indeed, I am very, very pleased with your work, and yes, there’s that little financial adjustment you mentioned; I haven’t forgotten it, and in due course we’ll talk about it. Agliè told me the lady will also be there, the beautiful lady—or perhaps not beautiful, but attractive; there’s something about her eyes—that friend of Belbo’s—what’s her name—?”
“Lorenza Pellegrini.”
“Yes. There’s something—no?—between her and our Belbo.”
“I believe they’re good friends.”
“Ah! A gentleman’s answer. Bravo, Casaubon. But I do not inquire out of idle curiosity; the fact is that I feel like a father to all of you and … glissons, a la guerre comme a la guerre…. Good-bye, dear boy.”
We really did have an appointment with Agliè in the hills near Turin, Belbo told me. A double appointment. The early hours of the evening would be a party in the castle of a very well-to-do Rosicrucian. Then Agliè would take us a few kilometers away, to a place where—at midnight, naturally—some kind of druidic rite, Belbo wasn’t sure what, would be held.
“I was also thinking,” Belbo added, “that we should sit down somewhere and give some thought to our history of metals, because here we keep being interrupted. Why don’t we leave Saturday and spend a couple of days in my old house in ***? It’s a beautiful spot; you’ll see, the hills are worth it. Diotallevi is coming, and maybe Lorenza will, too. Of course you can bring along anyone you want.”
He didn’t know Lia, but he knew I had a companion. I said I’d come alone. Lia and I had quarreled two days before. Nothing serious; it would be forgotten in a few days, but meanwhile I wanted to get away from Milan.
So we all went to *** the Garamond trio and Lorenza Pellegrini. At our departure, a tense moment. When it came time to get into the car, Lorenza said, “Maybe I’ll stay behind, so you three can work in peace. I’ll join you later with Simon.”
Belbo, both hands on the wheel, locked his elbows, stared straight ahead, and said in a low voice, “Get in.” Lorenza got in, and all through the trip, sitting up front, she kept her hand on the back of Belbo’s neck as he drove in silence.
*** was still the town Belbo had known during the war. But new houses were few, he told us, agriculture was in decline, because the young people had migrated to the city. He pointed to hills, now pasture, that had once been yellow with grain. The town appeared suddenly, after a curve at the foot of the low hill where Belbo’s house was. We got a view, beyond it, of the Monferrato plain, covered with a light, luminous mist. As the car climbed, Belbo directed our attention to the hill opposite, almost completely bare: at the top of it, a chapel flanked by two pines. “It’s called the Bricco,” he said, then added: “It doesn’t matter if it has no effect on you. We used to go there for the Angel’s lunch on Easter Monday. Now you can reach it in the car in five minutes, but then we went on foot, and it was a pilgrimage.”
I call a theatre [a place in which] all actions, all words, all particular subjects are shown as in a public theatre, where comedies and tragedies are acted.
—Robert Fludd, Utriusque Cosmi Historia, Tomi Secundi Tractatus Primi Sectio Secunda, Oppenheim (?), 1620 (?), p. 55
We arrived at the villa. Villa—actually, a large farmhouse, with great cellars on the ground floor, where Adelino Canepa—the quarrelsome tenant who had denounced Uncle Carlo to the partisans—once made wine from the vineyards of the Covasso land. It had long been unoccupied.
In a little peasant house nearby Adelino Canepa’s aunt still lived—a very old woman, Belbo told us, who tended a little vegetable garden, kept a few hens and a pig. The others were now long dead, uncle and aunt, the Canepas; only this centenarian remained. The land had been sold years before to pay the inheritance taxes and other debts. Belbo knocked at the door of the little house. The old woman appeared on the threshold, took a while to recognize the visitor, then made a great show of deference, inviting us in, but Belbo, after having embraced and calmed her, cut the meeting short.
We entered the villa, and Lorenza gave cries of joy as she discovered stairways, corridors, shadowy rooms with old furniture. As usual, Belbo played everything down, remarking only that each of us has the Tara he deserves, but he was clearly moved. He continued to visit
