"That's Ardenti," Belbo said. "But can you tell us what's going on here? From what you said on the phone, I didn't quite understand if he's dead or—"
"I'd be delighted if you could tell me that," De Angelis said with a frown. "But all right, you gentlemen are probably entitled to know a bit more. Signor Ardenti—or Colonel Ardenti—checked in four days ago. As you may have noticed, this place isn't the Grand. The one desk clerk goes to bed at eleven, because the guests have a key to the front door. There are a couple of maids who come in every morning to do the rooms, and an old alcoholic who acts as porter and takes liquor up to the rooms if the customers ring. Not only alcoholic, but arteriosclerotic, too. It was hell getting anything out of him. The desk clerk says the old man sees spooks and sometimes scares the guests. Last night the clerk saw Ardenti come in around ten and go up to his room with two men. In this place they don't bat an eye if somebody takes a whole troop of transvestites upstairs. The men looked normal, though according to the clerk they had foreign accents. At ten-thirty Ardenti called the old alcoholic and asked him to bring up a bottle of whiskey, mineral water, and three glasses. At about one or one-thirty the old man heard someone ringing erratically from room 27. Judging by the way he looked this morning, though, he must have put away quite a few glasses by then, rotgut for sure. Anyway, the old man came up and knocked. No answer. He opened the door with his passkey. Found everything all messed up the way it is now. The colonel was lying on the bed with a length of wire wound tight around his neck, his eyes staring. The old man ran downstairs, woke the desk clerk, but neither of them felt like coming back up. They tried to use the phone, but the line seemed to be dead. It was working perfectly this morning, but we'll take their word for it. The clerk ran out to call the police from the pay phone on the corner, while the old man hobbled across the square to a doctor's house, lb make a long story short, they were gone for twenty minutes. When they got back, they waited downstairs, still frightened. Meanwhile, the doctor got dressed and arrived almost at the same time as the squad car. They went up to twenty-seven, and there was no one on the bed."
"What do you mean, no one?" Belbo asked.
"No corpse. The doctor went home, and the police found only what you see here. They questioned the old alcoholic and the clerk, and got the story I just told you. What of the two gentlemen who came in with Ardenti at ten o'clock? They could have left anytime between eleven and one, and nobody would have noticed. Were they still in the room when the old man came in? Who knows? He stayed only a second, didn't look into the kitchen or the bathroom. Could they have left while the clerk and the alcoholic were out calling for help? Did they take the body with them? Not impossible. There's an outside staircase to the courtyard, and from the courtyard they could just walk out the front door, which opens into a side street.
"More important, was there really a body? Or did the colonel go out with the two men—at midnight, say—and the old alcoholic dreamed the whole thing? The clerk says it wouldn't be the first time the old man saw things that weren't there. A few years ago he saw a naked female guest hanged in her room, but half an hour later the woman came in, fresh as a daisy, and on the old man's cot they found one of those S-M magazines. Who knows? Maybe he was peeping through the keyhole and saw a curtain stirring in the shadows. All we know for sure is that this room has been searched and Ardenti is missing.
"But I've already talked too much. Now it's your turn, Dr. Belbo. The only thing we found was a slip of paper on the floor by that little table. '2 P.M. Rakosky, Hotel Principe e Savoia; 4 P.M. Garamond, Dr. Belbo.' You say he did come to see you. Tell me what happened."
22
The knights of the Graal wanted to face no further questions.
—Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, XVI, 819
Belbo was brief. He repeated what he had already said on the phone: The colonel had told a hazy story about discovering evidence of a treasure in some documents he had found in France, but he hadn't said much more about it. He seemed to think he was in possession of a dangerous secret, and he wanted to make it public so he wouldn't be the only one who knew it. He mentioned the fact that others who had discovered the secret before him had disappeared mysteriously. He would show us the documents only if we guaranteed him a contract, but Belbo couldn't guarantee a contract without seeing something first. They vaguely agreed to get together again. The colonel had spoken of a meeting with someone named Rakosky, describing him as the editor of Les Cahiers du Mystère. The colonel wanted this Rakosky to write a preface for him, and apparently Rakosky had advised him to delay publication. The colonel hadn't told this man about the appointment at Garamond. That was all.
"I see," De Angelis said. "What sort of impression did he make on you?"
"He seemed an eccentric to us, and he spoke about his past in, well, an unrepentant tone. It included a spell in the Foreign Legion."
"He told you the truth, though not the whole truth. We were already keeping an eye on him, at least to some extent. We have so many such cases.... First of all, Ardenti wasn't his real name, but he had a legitimate French passport. He started reappearing in Italy from time to time a few years ago, and was tentatively identified as a Captain Arcoveggi, sentenced to death in absentia in 1945. Collaboration with the SS. He sent some people to Dachau. They were keeping an eye on him in France, too. He was tried for fraud there, and just managed to get off. We have an idea—but only an idea, mind you—that Ardenti at one point was calling himself Fassotti, that he's the Fassotti that a small industrialist in Peschiera Borromeo filed a complaint against last year. This Fassotti—or Ardenti—had convinced the industrialist that the treasure of Dongo, the legendary Fascist gold reserve, was still lying at the bottom of Lake Como. Fassotti claimed to have identified the spot, and said all he needed was a few tens of millions of lire for a couple of divers and a power boat. Once he had the money, he vanished. Now you confirm that he had a kind of mania about treasures."
"And this Rakosky?"
"We checked. A Vladimir Rakosky was registered at the Principe e Savoia. French passport. Distinguished-looking gentleman. It matches the description the clerk here gave us. Alitalia says his name appears on the passenger list for the first flight to Paris this morning. I've alerted Interpol. Annunziata, anything come in from Paris?"
"Nothing so far, sir."
"And that's it. So Colonel Ardenti, or whatever his name is, arrived in Milan four days ago. We don't know what he did the first three, but yesterday at two he presumably saw Rakosky at the hotel, didn't tell him about going to see you—which is interesting—then last night he came here, probably with the same Rakosky and another man, and after that your guess is as good as mine. Even if they didn't kill him, they certainly searched his room. What were they looking for? In his jacket ... which reminds me, if he went out, it was in shirtsleeves, because the jacket with his passport in the pocket is still here. But that doesn't make things any easier, because the old man says the colonel was stretched out on the bed in his jacket, unless it was a different jacket. God, I feel like I'm in a loony bin. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, in his jacket we found plenty of money, too much money. So it wasn't money they were looking for. And you gentlemen have given me the only lead. You say the colonel had some documents. What did they look like?"
"He was carrying a brown briefcase," Belbo said.
"It looked more red to me," I said.
"Brown," Belbo insisted. "But I could be wrong."
"Red or brown," De Angelis said, "it's not here now. Last night's visitors must have taken it. The briefcase is what we have to concentrate on. If you ask me, Ardenti wasn't trying to publish a book at all. He had probably come up with something he could blackmail Rakosky with, and talking about a publishing contract was a way of applying pressure. That would have been more his style. From there, any number of hypotheses are possible. The two men may have threatened him and left, and Ardenti was so scared that he fled into the night, leaving everything behind except the briefcase, which he
clutched under his arm. But first, for some reason, he tried to make the old man think he was dead. It all sounds too much like a novel, and it doesn't account for the way the room was torn up. On the other hand, if the two men killed him and stole the briefcase, why would they also steal the corpse? Excuse me, but may I see your IDs?"
He looked at my student card, turning it over a few times. "Philosophy student, eh?"
"There are lots of us," I said.
"Far too many. And you're studying the Templars. Suppose I wanted to get some background on them—what should I read?"
I suggested two books, popular but fairly serious. I also told him he would find reliable information only up to the trial. After that it was all raving nonsense.
"I see," he said. "Now it's the Templars, too. One splinter group I haven't run into yet."
The policeman named Annunziata came in with a telegram: "The reply from Paris, sir."
De Angelis read it. "Great," he said. "No one in Paris has heard of Rakosky, and the passport number shows that it was stolen two years ago. Now we're really stuck. Monsieur Rakosky doesn't exist. You say he's the editor of a magazine—what was it called?" He made a note. "Well, we'll try, but I bet we find that the magazine doesn't exist either, or else it folded ages ago. All right, gentlemen, thanks for your help. I may trouble you again at some point. Oh, yes, one last question: Did Argenti indicate that he had connections with any political organization?"
"No," Belbo said. "He seemed to have given up politics for treasures."
"And confidence games." He turned to me. "You seem not to have liked him much."
"Not my style," I said. "But it wouldn't have occurred to me to strangle him with a length of wire. Except in theory."
"Naturally. Too much trouble. Relax, Signor Casaubon. I'm not one of those cops who think all students are criminals. Good luck, also, on your thesis."
"Excuse me," Belbo asked, "but just out of curiosity, are you homicide or political?"
"Good question. My opposite number from homicide was here last night. After they found a bit more on Ardenti in the records, he turned the case over to me. Yes, I'm from political. But I'm really not sure I'm the right man. Life isn't simple, the way it is in detective stories."
"I guess not," Belbo said, shaking his hand.
We left, but I was still troubled. Not because of De Angelis, who seemed nice enough, but because for the first time in my life I found myself involved in something shady. I had lied. And so had Belbo.
We parted at the door of the Garamond office, and we were both embarrassed.
"We didn't do anything wrong," Belbo said defensively. "It won't make any difference if the police don't learn about Ingolf and the Cathars. It was all raving anyway. Maybe Ardenti had to disappear for other reasons; there could be a thousand reasons. Maybe Rakosky was an Israeli secret-service agent settling old scores. Or maybe he was sent by some big shot the colonel had conned. Or maybe they were in the Foreign Legion together and there was some old grudge. Or maybe Rakosky was an Algerian assassin. And maybe this Templar-treasure story was only a minor episode in the life of our colonel. All right, the briefcase is missing, red or brown. By the way, it was good that you contradicted me: that made it clear we had only had a quick glimpse of it."
I said nothing, and Belbo didn't know how to conclude.
"You'll say I've run away again. Like Via Larga."
"Nonsense. We did the right thing. I'll see you."
I was sorry for him, because he felt like a coward. But I didn't. I had learned in school that when you deal with the police, you lie. As a matter of principle. But a guilty conscience can poison a friendship.
I didn't see Belbo for a long time after that. I was his remorse, and he was mine.
I worked for another year and produced two hundred and fifty typewritten pages on the trial of the Templars. It was then that I learned that a graduate student is less an object of suspicion than an undergraduate. Those were years when defending a thesis was considered evidence of respectful loyalty to the state, and you were treated with indulgence.
In the months that followed, some students started using guns. The days of mass demonstrations in the open air were drawing to a close.
***
I was short on ideals, but for that I had an alibi, because loving Amparo was like being in love with the Third World. Amparo was beautiful, Marxist, Brazilian, enthusiastic, disenchanted. She had a fellowship and splendidly mixed blood. All at the same time.
I met her at a party, and acted on impulse. "Excuse me," I said, "but I would like to make love to you."
"You're a filthy male chauvinist pig."
"Forget I said it."
"Never. I'm a filthy feminist."
She was going back to Brazil, and I didn't want to lose her. She put me in touch with the University of Rio, where the Italian department was looking for a lecturer. They offered me a two-year contract with an option to renew. I didn't feel at home in Italy anymore; I accepted.
Besides, I told myself, in the New World I wouldn't run into any Templars.
Wrong, I thought Saturday evening as I huddled in the periscope. Climbing the steps to the Garamond office had been like entering the Palace. Binah, Diotallevi used to say, is the palace Hokhmah builds as He spreads out from the primordial point. If Hokhmah is the source, Binah is the river that flows from it, separating into its various branches until they all empty into the great sea of the last Sefirah. But in Binah all forms are already formed.
HESED
23
The analogy of opposites is the relation of light to shadow, peak to abyss, fullness to void. Allegory, mother of all dogmas, is the replacement of the seal by the hallmark, of reality by shadow; it is the falsehood of truth, and the truth of falsehood.
—Eliphas Levi, Dogme de la haute magie, Paris, Ballière, 1856, XXII, 22
I went to Brazil out of love for Amparo, I stayed out of love for the country. I never did understand how it was that Amparo, a descendant of Dutch settlers in Recife who intermarried with Indians and Sudanese blacks—with her Jamaican face and Parisian culture—had wound up with a Spanish name. For that matter, I never managed to figure out Brazilian names. They defy all onomastic dictionaries, and exist only in Brazil.
Amparo told me that in their hemisphere, when water drains down a sink, the little eddy swirls counterclockwise, whereas at home, ours swirls clockwise. Or maybe it's the other way around: I've never succeeded in checking the truth of it. Not only because nobody in our hemisphere has ever looked to see which way the water swirls, but also because, after various experiments in Brazil, I realized it's very hard to tell. The suction is too quick to be studied, and its direction probably depends partly on the force and angle of the jet and the shape of the sink or the tub. Besides, if this is true, what happens at the equator? Maybe the water drains straight down, with no swirling, or maybe it doesn't drain at all.
At that time I didn't agonize over the problem, but Saturday night in the periscope I was thinking how everything depended on telluric currents, and the Pendulum contained the secret.
Amparo was steadfast in her faith. "The particular empirical event doesn't matter," she said. "It's an ideal principle, which can be verified only under ideal conditions. Which means never. But it's still true."
In Milan, Amparo's disenchantment had been one of her most desirable traits. But in Brazil, reacting to the chemistry of her native land, she became elusive, a visionary capable of subterranean rationality. Stirred by ancient passions, she was careful to keep them in check; but the asceticism which made her reject their seduction was not convincing.
I measured her splendid contradictions when I watched her argue with her comrades. The meetings were held in shabby houses decorated with a few posters and a lot of folk art, portraits of Lenin and Amerindian fetishes, or terra-cotta figures glorifying the cangaceiros, outlaws of the Northeast. I hadn't arrived during one of the country's most lucid moments politically, and, after my expe
riences at home, I decided to steer clear of ideologies, especially in a place where I didn't understand them. The way Amparo's comrades talked made me even more uncertain, but they also roused a new curiosity in me. They were, naturally, all Marxists, and at first they seemed to talk more or less like European Marxists, but the subject somehow was always different. In the middle of an argument about the class struggle, they would suddenly mention "Brazilian cannibalism" or the revolutionary role of Afro-Brazilian religions.
Hearing them talk about these cults convinced me that at least ideological suction, down there, swirled in the opposite direction. They described a panorama of internal migrations back and forth, the disinherited of the north moving down toward the industrial south, where they became subproletarians in immense smog-choked metropolises, eventually returning in desperation to the north, only to repeat their flight southward in the next cycle. But many ran aground in the big cities during these oscillations, and they were absorbed by a plethora of indigenous churches; they worshiped spirits, evoked African divinities ... And here Amparo's comrades were divided: some considered this a return to their roots, a way of opposing the white world; others thought these cults were the opiate with which the ruling class held an immense revolutionary potential in check; and still others maintained that the cults were a melting pot in which whites, Indians, and blacks could be blended—for what purpose, they were not clear. Amparo had made up her mind: religion was alway's the opiate of the people, and pseudo-tribal cults were even worse. But when I held her by the waist in the escolas de samba, joining in the snaking lines to the unbearable rhythm of the drums, I realized that she clung to that world with the muscles of her belly, her heart, her head, her nostrils.... Afterward, she was the first to offer a bitter, sarcastic analysis of the orgiastic character of people's religious devotion—week after week and month after month—to the rite of Carnival. Exactly the same sort of tribal witchcraft, she would say with revolutionary contempt, as the soccer rituals in which the disinherited expended their combative energy and sense of revolt, practicing spells and enchantments to win from the gods of every possible world the death of the opposing halfback, completely unaware of the Establishment, which wanted to keep them in a state of ecstatic enthusiasm, condemned to unreality.