Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum Read Online Free Page A

will
start screaming. Periscope. Submarine. Trapped on the ocean floor.
Maybe the great black fish of the abyss are already circling you,
unseen, and all you know is that you're running out of
air...
    I took several deep
breaths. Concentrate. The only thing you can rely on at a time like
this is the laundry list. Stick to facts, causes, effects. I am
here for this reason, and also for this reason and
this...
    Memories, distinct,
precise, orderly. Of the past three frantic days, of the past two
years, and the forty-year-old memories I found when I broke into
Jacopo Belbo's electronic brain.
    I am remembering now (as
I remembered then) in order to make sense out of the chaos of that
misguided creation of ours.
    Now (as then, while I
waited in the periscope) I shrink into one remote corner of my
mind, to draw from it a story. Such as the Pendulum. Diotallevi
told me that the first Sefirah is Keter, the Crown, the beginning,
the primal void. In the beginning He created a point, which became
Thought, where all the figures were drawn. He was and was not, He
was encompassed in the name yet not encompassed in the name, having
as yet no name other than the desire to be called by a name...He
traced signs in the air; a dark light leapt from His most secret
depth, like a colorless mist that gives form to formlessness, and
as the mist spread, a burst of flames took shape in its center, and
the flames streamed down to illuminate the lower Sefirot, and down,
down to the Kingdom.
    But perhaps in that
simsun, that diminishment, that lonely separation¡XDiotallevi
said¡Xthere was already the promise of the return.

HOKHMAH

3
    In hanc utilitatem
clementes angeli saepe figuras, characteres, formas et voces
invenerunt proposueruntque nobis mortalibus et ignotas et stupendas
nullius rei iuxta consuetum linguae usum significativas, sed per
rationis nostrae summam admirationem in assiduam intelligibilium
pervestigationem, deinde in illorum ipsorum venerationem et amorem
inductivas.
    ¡XJohannes Reuchlin, De
arte cabalistica, Hagenhau, 1517, III
    It had been two days
earlier, a Thursday. I was lazing in bed, undecided about getting
up. I had arrived the previous afternoon and had telephoned my
office. Diotallevi was still in the hospital, and Gudrun sounded
pessimistic: condition unchanged; in other words, getting worse. I
couldn't bring myself to go and visit him.
    Belbo was away. Gudrun
told me he telephoned to say he had to go somewhere for family
reasons. What family? The odd thing was, he took away the word
processor¡XAbulafia, he called it¡X and the printer, too. Gudrun
also told me he had set it up at home in order to finish some work.
Why had he gone to all that trouble? Couldn't he do it in the
office?
    I felt like a displaced
person. Lia and the baby wouldn't be back until next week. The
previous evening I'd dropped by Pi-lade's, but found no one
there.
    The phone woke me. It
was Belbo; his voice different, remote.
    "Where the hell are you?
Lost in the jungle?"
    "Don't joke, Casaubon.
This is serious. I'm in Paris."
    "Paris? But I was the
one who was supposed to go to the Conservatoire."
    "Stop joking, damn it.
I'm in a booth¡Xin a bar. I may not be able to talk much
longer..."
    "If you're running out
of change, call collect. I'll wait here."
    "Change isn't the
problem. I'm in trouble." He was talking fast, not giving me time
to interrupt. "The Plan. The Plan is real. I know, don't say it.
They're after me."
    "Who?" I still couldn't
understand.
    "The Templars, Casaubon,
for God's sake. You won't want to believe this, I know, but it's
all true. They think I have the map, they tricked me, made me come
to Paris. At midnight Saturday they want me at the Conservatoire.
Saturday¡Xyou understand¡XSaint John's Eve..." He was talking
disjointedly; and I couldn't follow him. "I don't want to go. I'm
on the run Casaubon. They'll kill me. Tell De Angelis¡Xno, De
Angelis is useless¡Xkeep the police out of it..."
    "Then what do you want
me to