We midwives, who assist at the births of what others conceive, should be refused burial in consecrated ground. Like actors. Except that actors play with the world as it is, while we play with a plurality of make-believes, with the endless possibilities of existence in an infinite universe....
How can life be so bountiful, providing such sublime rewards for mediocrity?
12
Sub umbra alarum tuarum, Jehova.
—Fama Fraternitatis, in Allgemeine und general Reformation, Cassel, Wessel, 1514, conclusion
The next day, I went to Garamond Press. Number I, Via Sincero Renato, opened into a dusty passage, from which you could glimpse a courtyard and a rope-maker's shop. To the right was an elevator that looked like something out of an industrial archeology exhibit. When I tried to take it, it shuddered, jerked, as if unable to make up its mind to ascend, so prudently I got out and climbed two flights of dusty, almost circular wooden stairs. I later learned that Mr. Garamond loved this building because it reminded him of a publishing house in Paris. A metal plate on the landing said GARAMOND PRESS, and an open door led to a lobby with no switchboard or receptionist of any kind. But you couldn't go in without being seen from a little outer office, and I was immediately confronted by a person, probably female, of indeterminate age and a height that could euphemistically be called below average.
She accosted me in a foreign language that was somehow familiar; then I realized it was Italian, an Italian almost completely lacking in vowels. When I asked for Belbo, she led me down a corridor to an office in the back.
Belbo welcomed me cordially: "So, you are a serious person. Come in." He had me sit opposite his desk, which was old, like everything else, and piled high with manuscripts, as were the shelves on the walls.
"I hope Gudrun didn't frighten you," he said.
"Gudrun? That ... signora?"
"Signorina. Her name isn't really Gudrun. We call her that because of her Nibelung look and because her speech is vaguely Teutonic. She wants to say everything quickly, so she saves time by leaving out the vowels. But she has a sense of justitia aequatrix: when she types, she skips consonants."
"What does she do here?"
"Everything, unfortunately. In every publishing house there is one person who is indispensable, the only one who can find things in the mess that he or she creates. At least when a manuscript is lost, you know whose fault it is."
"She loses manuscripts, too?"
"Publishers arc always losing manuscripts. I think sometimes that's their main activity. But a scapegoat is always necessary, don't you agree? My only complaint is that she doesn't lose the ones I'd like to see lost. Contretemps, these, in what the good Bacon called The Advancement of Learning."
"How do they get lost?"
He spread his arms. "Forgive me, but that is a stupid question. If we knew how they got lost, they wouldn't get lost."
"Logical," I said. "But look, the Garamond books I see here and there seem very carefully made, and you have an impressive catalog. Is it all done here? How many of you are there?"
"There's a room for the production staff across the hall; next door is my colleague Diotallevi. But he does the reference books, the big projects, works that take forever to produce and have a long sales life. I do the university editions. It's not really that much work. Naturally I get involved with some of the books, but as a rule we have nothing to worry about editorially, academically, or financially. Publications of an institute, or conference proceedings under the aegis of a university. If the author's a beginner, his professor writes the preface. The author corrects the proofs, checks the quotations and footnotes, and receives no royalties. The book is adopted as a textbook, a few thousand copies are sold in a few years, and our expenses are covered. No surprises, no red ink."
"What do you do, then?"
"A lot of things. For example, we publish some books at our own expense, usually translations of prestige authors, to add tone to the catalog. And then there are the manuscripts that just turn up, left at the door. Rarely publishable, but they all have to be read. You never can tell."
"Do you like it?"
"Like it? It's the only thing I know how to do well."
We were interrupted by a man in his forties wearing a jacket a few sizes too big, with wispy light hair that fell over thick blond eyebrows. He spoke softly, as if he were instructing a child.
"I'm sick of this Taxpayer's Vade Mecum. The whole thing needs to be rewritten, and I don't feel like it. Am I intruding?"
"This is Diotallevi," Belbo said, introducing us.
"Oh, you're here to look at that Templar thing. Poor man. Listen, Jacopo, I thought of a good one: Urban Planning for Gypsies."
"Great," Belbo said admiringly. "I have one, too: Aztec Equitation."
"Excellent. But would that go with Potio-section or the Adynata?"
"We'll have to see," Belbo said. He rummaged in his drawer and took out some sheets of paper. "Potio-section..." He looked at me, saw my bewilderment. "Potio-section, as everybody knows, of course, is the art of slicing soup. No, no," he said to Diotallevi. "It's not a department, it's a subject, like Mechanical Avunculogratulation or Pylocatabasis. They all fall under the heading of Tetrapyloctomy."
"What's tetra...?" I asked.
"The art of splitting a hair four ways. This is the department of useless techniques. Mechanical Avunculogratulation, for example, is how to build machines for greeting uncles. We're not sure, though, if Pylo-catabasis belongs, since it's the art of being saved by a hair. Somehow that doesn't seem completely useless."
"All right, gentlemen," I said, "I give up. What are you two talking about?"
"Well, Diotallevi and I are planning a reform in higher education. A School of Comparative Irrelevance, where useless or impossible courses are given. The school's aim is to turn out scholars capable of endlessly increasing the number of unnecessary subjects."
"And how many departments are there?"
"Four so far, but that may be enough for the whole syllabus. The Tetrapyloctomy department has a preparatory function; its purpose is to inculcate a sense of irrelevance. Another important department is Adynata, or Impossibilia. Like Urban Planning for Gypsies. The essence of the discipline is the comprehension of the underlying reasons for a thing's absurdity. We have courses in Morse syntax, the history of antarctic agriculture, the history of Easter Island painting, contemporary Sumerian literature, Montessori grading, Assyrio-Babylonian philately, the technology of the wheel in pre-Columbian empires, and the phonetics of the silent film."
"How about crowd psychology in the Sahara?"
"Wonderful," Belbo said.
Diotallevi nodded. "You should join us. The kid's got talent, eh, Jacopo?"
"Yes, I saw that right away. Last night he constructed some moronic arguments with great skill. But let's continue. What did we put in the Oxymoronics department? I can't find my notes."
Diotallevi took a slip of paper from his pocket and regarded me with friendly condescension. "In Oxymoronics, as the name implies, what matters is self-contradiction. That's why I think it's the place for Urban Planning for Gypsies."
"No," Belbo said. "Only if it were Nomadic Urban Planning. The Adynata concern empirical impossibilities; Oxymoronics deal with contradictions in terms."
"Maybe. But what courses did we put under Oxymoronics? Oh, yes, here we are: Tradition in Revolution, Democratic Oligarchy, Parmenidean Dynamics, Heraclitean Statics, Spartan Sybaritics, Tautological Dialectics, Boolean Eristic."
I couldn't resist throwing in "How about a Grammar of Solecisms?"
"Excellent!" they both said, making a note.
"One problem," I said.
"What?"
"If the public gets wind of this, people will show up with manuscripts."
"The boy's sharp, Jacopo," Diotallevi said. "Unwittingly, we've drawn up a real prospectus for scholarship. We've shown the necessity of the impossible. Therefore, mum's the word. But I have to go now."
/> "Where?" Belbo asked.
"It's Friday afternoon."
"Jesus Christ!" Belbo said, then turned to me. "Across the street are a few houses where Orthodox Jews live; you know, black hats, beards, earlocks. There aren't many of them in Milan. This is Friday, and the Sabbath begins at sundown, so in the afternoon they start preparing in the apartment across the way: polishing the candlesticks, cooking the food, setting everything up so they won't have to light any fires tomorrow. They even leave the TV on all night, picking a channel in advance. Anyway, Diotallevi here has a pair of binoculars; he spies on them with delight, pretending he's on the other side of the street."
"Why?" I asked.
"Our Diotallevi thinks he's Jewish."
"What do you mean, 'thinks'?" Diotallevi said, annoyed. "I aw Jewish. Do you have anything against that, Casaubon?"
"Of course not."
"Diotallevi is not Jewish," Belbo said firmly.
"No? And what about my name? Just like Graziadio or Diosiacontè. A traditional Jewish name. A ghetto name, like Sholom Aleichem."
"Diotallevi is a good-luck name given to foundlings by city officials. Your grandfather was a foundling."
"A Jewish foundling."
"Diotallevi, you have pink skin, you're practically an albino."
"There are albino rabbits; why not albino Jews?"
"Diotallevi, a person can't just decide to be a Jew the way he might decide to be a stamp collector or a Jehovah's Witness. Jews are born. Admit it! You're a gentile like the rest of us."
"I'm circumcised."
"Come on! Lots of people are circumcised, for reasons of hygiene. All you need is a doctor with a knife. How old were you when you were circumcised?"
"Let's not nitpick."
"No, let's. Jews nitpick."
"Nobody can prove my grandfather wasn't Jewish."
"Of course not; he was a foundling. He could have been anything, the heir to the throne of Byzantium or a Hapsburg bastard."
"He was found near the Portico d'Ottavia, in the ghetto in Rome."
"But your grandmother wasn't Jewish, and Jewish descent is supposed to be matrilineal...."
"And skipping registry reasons—and municipal ledgers can also be read beyond the letter—there are reasons of blood. The blood in me says that my thoughts are exquisitely Talmudic, and it would be racist for you to claim that a gentile can be as exquisitely Talmudic as I am."
He left. "Don't pay any attention," Belbo said. "We have this argument almost every day. The fact is, Diotallevi is a devotee of the cabala. But there were also Christian cabalists. Anyway, if Diotallevi wants to be Jewish, why should I object?"
"Why indeed. We're all liberals here."
"So we are."
He lit a cigarette. I remembered why I had come. "You mentioned a manuscript about the Templars," I said.
"That's right.... Let's see. It was in a fake-leather folder...." He tried to pick a manuscript out of the middle of a pile without disturbing the others. A hazardous operation. Part of the pile fell to the floor. Now Belbo was holding the fake-leather folder.
I looked at the table of contents and the introduction. "It deals with the arrest of the Templars," I said. "In 1307, Philip the Fair decided to arrest all the Templars in France. There's a legend that two days before Philip issued the arrest warrant, an ox-drawn hay wain left the enclave of the Temple in Paris for an unknown destination. They say that hidden in the wain was a group of knights led by one Aumont. These knights supposedly escaped, took refuge in Scotland, and joined a Masonic lodge in Kilwinning. According to the legend, they became part of the society of Freemasons, who served as guardians of the secrets of the Temple of Solomon. Ah, here we are; I thought so. This writer, too, claims that the origins of Masonry lie in the Templars' escape to Scotland. A story that's been rehashed for a couple of centuries, with no foundation to it. I can give you at least fifty pamphlets that tell the same tale, each cribbed from the other. Here, listen to this—just a page picked at random: 'The proof of the Scottish expedition lies in the fact that even today, six hundred and fifty years later, there still exist in the world secret orders that hark back to the Temple Militia. How else is one to explain the continuity of this heritage?' You see what I mean? How can the Marquis de Carabas not exist when Puss in Boots says he's in the marquis's service?"
"All right," Belbo said, "I'll throw it out. But this Templar business interests me. For once I have an expert handy, and I don't want to let him get away. Why is there all this talk about the Templars and nothing about the Knights of Malta? No, don't tell me now. It's late. Diotallevi and I have to go to dinner with Signor Garamond in a little while. We should be through by about ten-thirty. I'll try to persuade Diotallevi to drop by Pilade's—he goes to bed early and usually doesn't drink. Will you be there?"
"Where else? I belong to a lost generation and am comfortable only in the company of others who are lost and lonely."
13
Li frere, li mestre du Temple
Qu'estoient rempli et ample
D'or et d'argent et de richesse
Et qui menoient tel noblesse,
Où sont ils? que sont devenu?
—Chronique à la suite du roman de Favel
Et in Arcadia ego. That evening Pilade's was the image of the golden age. One of those evenings when you feel that not only will there definitely be a revolution, but that the Association of Manufacturers will foot the bill for it. Where but at Pilade's could you watch the bearded owner of a cotton mill, wearing a parka, play hearts with a future fugitive from justice dressed in a double-breasted jacket and tie? This was the dawn of great changes in style. Until the beginning of the sixties, beards were fascist, and you had to trim them, and shave your cheeks, in the style of Italo Balbo; but by '68 beards meant protest, and now they were becoming neutral, universal, a matter of personal preference. Beards have always been masks (you wear a fake beard to keep from being recognized), but in those years, the early seventies, a real beard was also a disguise. You could lie while telling the truth—or, rather, by making the truth elusive and enigmatic. A man's politics could no longer be guessed from his beard. That evening, beards seemed to hover on clean-shaven faces whose very lack of hair suggested defiance.
I digress. Belbo and Diotallevi arrived tense, exchanging harsh whispers about the dinner they had just come from. Only later did I learn what Signor Garamond's dinners were.
Belbo went straight to his favorite distillations; Diotallevi, after pondering at length, decided on tonic water. We found a little table in the back. Two tram drivers who had to get up early the next morning were leaving.
"Now then," Diotallevi said, "these Templars...."
"But, really, you can read about the Templars anywhere...."
"We prefer the oral tradition," Belbo said.
"It's more mystical," Diotallevi said. "God created the world by speaking, He didn't send a telegram."
"Fiat lux, stop," Belbo said.
"Epistle follows," I said.
"The Templars, then?" Belbo asked.
"Very well," I said. "To begin with ..."
"You should never begin with 'To begin with,'" Diotallevi objected.
"To begin with, there's the First Crusade. Godefroy worships at the Holy Sepulcher and fulfills his vow. Baudouin becomes the first king of Jerusalem. A Christian kingdom in the Holy Land. But holding Jerusalem is one thing; quite another, to conquer the rest of Palestine. The Saracens are down but not out. Life's not easy for the new occupiers, and not easy for the pilgrims either. And then in 1118, during the reign of Baudouin II, nine young men led by a fellow named Hugues de Payns arrive and set up the nucleus of an order of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Jesus Christ: a monastic order, but with sword and shield. The three classic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, plus a fourth: defense of pilgrims. The king, the bishop, everyone in Jerusalem contributes money, offers the knights lodging, and finally sets them up in the cloister of the old Temple of Solomon. From then
on they are known as the Knights of the Temple."
"But what were they really?"
"Hugues and the original eight others were probably idealists caught up in the mystique of the Crusade. But later recruits were most likely younger sons seeking adventure. Remember, the new kingdom of Jerusalem was sort of the California of the day, the place you went to make your fortune. Prospects at home were not great, and some of the knights may have been on the run for one reason or another. I think of it as a kind of Foreign Legion. What do you do if you're in trouble? You join the Templars, see the world, have some fun, do a little fighting. They feed you and clothe you, and in the end, as a bonus, you save your soul. Of course, you had to be pretty desperate, because it meant going out into the desert, sleeping in a tent, spending days and days without seeing a living soul except other Templars, and maybe a Turk now and then. In the meantime, you ride under the sun, dying of thirst, and cut the guts out of other poor bastards."
I stopped for a moment. "Maybe I'm making it sound too much like a Western. There was probably a third phase. Once the order became powerful, people may have wanted to join even if they were well off at home. By that time, though, you could be a Templar without having to go to the Holy Land; you could be a Templar at home, too. It gets complicated. Sometimes they sound like tough soldiers, and sometimes they show sensitivity. For example, you can't call them racists. Yes, they fought the Moslems—that was the whole point—but they fought in a spirit of chivalry and with mutual respect. Once, when the ambassador of the emir of Damascus was visiting Jerusalem, the Templars let him say his prayers in a little mosque that had been turned into a Christian church. One day a Frank came in, was outraged to see a Moslem in a holy place, and started to rough him up. But the Templars threw the intolerant Frank out and apologized to the Moslem. Later on, this fraternization with the enemy helped lead to their ruin: one of the charges against them at their trial was that they had dealings with esoteric Moslem sects. Which may have been true. They were a little like the nineteenth-century adventurers who went native and caught the mal d'Afrique. The Templars, lacking the usual monastic education, were slow to grasp the fine points of theology. Think of them as Lawrences of Arabia, who after a while start dressing like sheiks.... But it's difficult to get an objective picture of their behavior because contemporary Christian historiographers, William of Tyre, for example, take every opportunity to vilify them."