“Where from?”
“Oh, the outside walls have other entrances besides the gate. But that evening the girl didn’t come in; I sent her back precisely because of what I discovered, what I’m about to tell you. This is why I tried to have her return last night. If you’d arrived a bit later you would have found me instead of Salvatore; it was he who warned me there were people in the Aedificium. So I went back to my cell. . . .”
“Let’s return to the night between Sunday and Monday.”
“Yes, then. I entered the kitchen, and on the floor I saw Venantius, dead.”
“In the kitchen?”
“Yes, near the sink. Perhaps he had just come down from the scriptorium.”
“No sign of a struggle?”
“None. Though there was a broken cup beside the body, and traces of water on the ground.”
“How do you know it was water?”
“I don’t know. I thought it was water. What else might it have been?”
As William pointed out to me later, that cup could mean two different things. Either someone had given Venantius a poisoned potion to drink right there in the kitchen, or else the poor youth had already taken the poison (but where? and when?) and had come down to drink, to soothe a sudden burning, a spasm, a pain that seared his viscera or his tongue (for certainly his must have been black like Berengar’s).
In any case, we could learn no more for the moment. Having glanced at the corpse, terrified, Remigio asked himself what he should do and decided he would do nothing. If he sought help, he would have to admit he had been wandering around the Aedificium at night, nor would it do his now lost brother any good. Therefore, he resolved to leave things as they were, waiting for someone else to discover the body in the morning, when the doors were opened. He rushed to head off Salvatore, who was already bringing the girl into the abbey, then he and his accomplice went off to sleep, if their agitated vigil till matins could be called that. And at matins, when the swineherds brought the news to the abbot, Remigio believed the body had been discovered where he had left it, and was aghast to find it in the jar. Who had spirited the corpse out of the kitchen? For this Remigio had no explanation.
“The only one who can move freely about the Aedificium is Malachi,” William said.
The cellarer reacted violently: “No, not Malachi. That is, I don’t believe . . . In any case, I didn’t say anything to you against Malachi. . . .”
“Rest assured, whatever your debt to Malachi may be. Does he know something about you?”
“Yes.” The cellarer blushed. “And he has behaved like a man of discretion. If I were you, I would keep an eye on Benno. He had strange connections with Berengar and Venantius. . . . But I swear to you, I’ve seen nothing else. If I learn something, I’ll tell you.”
“For the present this will do. I’ll seek you out again if I need you.” The cellarer, obviously relieved, returned to his dealings, sharply reproaching the peasants, who in the meantime had apparently shifted some sacks of seeds.
At that point Severinus joined us. In his hand he was carrying William’s lenses—the ones stolen two nights before. “I found them inside Berengar’s habit,” he said. “I saw them on your nose the other day in the scriptorium. They are yours, aren’t they?”
“God be praised,” William cried joyously. “We’ve solved two problems! I have my lenses and I finally know for sure that it was Berengar who robbed us the other night in the scriptorium!”
We had barely finished speaking when Nicholas of Morimondo came running up, even more triumphant than William. In his hands he held a finished pair of lenses, mounted on their fork. “William,” he cried, “I did it all by myself. I’ve finished them! I believe they’ll work!” Then he saw that William had other lenses on his nose, and he was stunned. William didn’t want to humiliate him: he took off his old lenses and tried on the new ones.
“These are better than the others,” he said. “So I’ll keep the old ones as a spare pair, and will always use yours.” Then he turned to me. “Adso, now I shall withdraw to my cell to read those papers you know about. At last! Wait for me somewhere. And thank you, thank all of you, dearest brothers.”
Terce was ringing and I went to the choir, to recite with the others the hymn, the psalms, the verses, and the “Kyrie.” The others were praying for the soul of the dead Berengar. I was thanking God for having allowed us to find not one but two pairs of lenses.
In that great peace, forgetting all the ugly things I had seen and heard, I dozed off, waking only as the office ended. I realized I hadn’t slept that night and I was distressed to think also how I had expended much of my strength. And at this point, coming out into the fresh air, I began to find my thoughts obsessed by the memory of the girl.
Trying to distract myself, I began to stride rapidly over the grounds. I felt a slight dizziness. I clapped my numbed hands together. I stamped my feet on the earth. I was still sleepy, and yet I felt awake and full of life. I could not understand what was happening to me.
TERCE
In which Adso writhes in the torments of love, then William arrives with Venantius’s text, which remains undecipherable even after it has been deciphered.
To tell the truth, the other terrible events following my sinful encounter with the girl had caused me almost to forget that occurrence, and once I had confessed to Brother William, my spirit was relieved of the remorse I had felt on waking after my guilty lapse, so it was as if I had handed over to the monk, with my words, the burden itself of which they were the signifying voice. What is the purpose of the holy cleansing of confession, if not to unload the weight of sin, and the remorse it involves, into the very bosom of our Lord, obtaining with absolution a new and airy lightness of soul, such as to make us forget the body tormented by wickedness?
But I was not freed of everything. Now, as I walked in the cold, pale sun of that winter morning, surrounded by the fervor of men and animals, I began to remember my experiences in a different way. As if, from everything that had happened, my repentance and the consoling words of the penitential cleansing no longer remained, but only visions of bodies and human limbs. Into my feverish mind came abruptly the ghost of Berengar, swollen with water, and I shuddered with revulsion and pity. Then, as if to dispel that lemur, my mind turned to other images of which the memory was a fresh receptacle, and I could not avoid seeing, clear before my eyes (the eyes of the soul, but almost as if it appeared before my fleshly eyes), the image of the girl, beautiful and terrible as an army arrayed for battle.
I have vowed (aged amanuensis of a text till now unwritten, though for long decades it has spoken in my mind) to be a faithful chronicler, not only out of love for the truth, or the desire (worthy though it be) to instruct my future readers, but also out of a need to free my memory, dried up and weary of visions that have troubled it for a whole lifetime. Therefore, I must tell everything, decently but without shame. And I must say now, and clearly, what I thought then and almost tried to conceal from myself, walking over the grounds, sometimes breaking into a run so that I might attribute to the motion of my body the sudden pounding of my heart, or stopping to admire the work of the villeins, deluding myself that I was being distracted by such contemplation, breathing the cold air deeply into my lungs, as a man drinks wine to forget fear or sorrow.
In vain. I thought of the girl. My flesh had forgotten the intense pleasure, sinful and fleeting (a base thing), that union with her had given me; but my soul had not forgotten her face, and could not manage to feel that this memory was perverse: rather, it throbbed as if in that face shone all the bliss of creation.
I sensed, in a confused way, and almost denying to myself the truth of what I felt, that the poor, filthy, impudent creature who sold herself (who knows with what stubborn constancy) to other sinners, that daughter of Eve, weak like all her sisters, who had so often bartered her own flesh, was yet something splendid and wondrous. My intellect knew her as an occasion of sin, my sensitive appetite perceived her as the vessel of every grace. It is difficult to say what I felt.
I could try to write that, still caught in the snares of sin, I desired, culpably, for her to appear at every moment, and I spied on
