Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum by eco foucault (important books to read .txt) 📗

certain that if I left, I would not be able to find thatroute back in. I had to hide somewhere in the building.

I tried to shake off the spell of the place andlook at the nave with cold eyes. It was not an epiphany now I wasseeking, but information. I imagined that in the other halls itwould be difficult to escape the notice of the guards, who made therounds at closing time, checking to see that no thief was lurkingsomewhere. The nave, however, crammed with vehicles, was the idealplace to settle in for the night as a passenger: a live man hidinginside a lifeless vehicle. We had played too many games for me notto try this one, too.

Take heart, I said to myself: don't think ofWisdom now; ask the help of Science.

2

Wee haue divers curious Clocks; And other likeMotions of Return...Wee haue also Houses of Deceits of the Senses,where we represent all manner of Feats of Juggling, FalseApparitions, Impostures, and Illusions...These are (my sonne) theRiches of Salomon's House.

¡XFrancis Bacon, The New Atlantis, ed. Rawley,London, 1627, pp. 41-42

I gained control of my nerves, my imagination.I had to play this ironically, as I had been playing it until a fewdays before, not letting myself become involved. I was in a museumand had to be dramatically clever and clearheaded.

I looked at the now-familiar planes above me: Icould climb into the fuselage of a biplane, to await the night asif I were flying over the Channel, anticipating the Legion ofHonor. The names of the automobiles on the ground had anaffectionately nostalgic ring. The 1932 Hispano-Suiza was handsome,welcoming, but too close to the front desk. I might have slippedpast the attendant if I had turned up in plus fours and Norfolkjacket, stepping aside for a lady in a cream-colored suit, with along scarf wound around her slender neck, a cloche pulled over herbobbed hair. The 1931 Citroen C6G was shown only in cross section,an excellent educational display but a ridiculous hiding place.Cugnot's enormous steam automobile, all boiler, or cauldron, wasout of the question. I looked to the right, where velocipedes withhuge art-nouveau wheels and draisiennes with their flat,scooterlike bars evoked gentlemen in stovepipe hats, knights ofprogress pedaling through the Bois de Boulogne.

Across from the velocipedes were cars withbodies intact, ample receptacles. Perhaps not the 1945 PanhardDynavia, too open and narrow in its aerodynamic sleekness; but thetall 1909 Peugeot¡Xan attic, a boudoir¡Xwas definitely worthconsidering. Once I was inside, deep in its leather divan, no onewould suspect a thing. But the car would not be easy to get into;one of the guards was sitting on a bench directly opposite, hisback to the bicycles. I pictured myself stepping onto the runningboard, clumsy in my fur-collared coat, while he, calves sheathed inleather leggings, doffed his visored cap and obsequiously openedthe door...

I concentrated for a moment on thetwelve-passenger Obeis-sante, 1872, the first French vehicle withgears. If the Peugeot was an apartment, this was a building. Butthere was no hope of boarding it without attracting everyone'sattention. Difficult to hide when the hiding places are pictures atan exhibition.

I crossed the hall again, and there was theStatue of Liberty, "eclairant le monde" from a pedestal at leasttwo meters high in the shape of a prow with a sharp beak. Insidethe pedestal was a kind of sentry box, from which you could lookthrough a porthole at a diorama of New York harbor. A goodobservation point at midnight, because through the darkness itwould be possible to see into the choir to the left and the nave tothe right, your back protected by a great stone statue of Gramme,which faced other corridors from the transept where it stood. Indaylight, however, you could look into the sentry box from outside,and once the visitors were gone, a guard would probably make aroutine check and peer in, just to be on the safe side.

I didn't have much time: they closed atfive-thirty. I took another quick look at the ambulatory. None ofthe engines would serve the purpose. Nor would the great shipmachinery on the right, relics of some Lusitania engulfed by thewaves, nor Le-noir's immense gas engine with its variety ofcogwheels. In fact, now that the light was fading, watery throughthe gray window-panes, I felt fear again at the prospect of hidingamong these animals, for I dreaded seeing them come to life in thedarkness, reborn in the shadows in the glow of my flashlight. Idreaded their panting, their heavy, telluric breath, skinlessbones, viscera creaking and fetid with black-grease drool. Howcould I endure in the midst of that foul concatenation of dieselgenitals and turbine-driven vaginas, the inorganic throats thatonce had flamed, steamed, and hissed, and might again that verynight? Or maybe they would buzz like stag beetles or chirr likecicadas amid those skeletal incarnations of pure, abstractfunctionality, automata able to crush, saw, shift, break, slice,accelerate, ram, and gulp fuel, their cylinders sobbing. Or theywould jerk like sinister marionettes, making drums turn, convertingfrequencies, transforming energies, spinning flywheels. How could Ifight them if they came after me, instigated by the Masters of theWorld, who used them as proof¡Xuseless devices, idols only of thebosses of the lower universe¡Xof the error of creation?

I had to leave, get away; this was madness. Iwas falling into the same trap, the same game that had drivenJacopo Belbo out of his mind, I, the doubter...

I don't know if I did the right thing twonights ago, hiding in that museum. If I hadn't, I would know thebeginning of the story but not the end. Nor would I be here now,alone on this hill, while dogs bark in the distance, in the valleybelow, as I wonder: Was that really the end, or is the end yet tocome?

I decided to move on. I abandoned the chapel,turned left at the statue of Gramme, and entered a gallery. It wasthe railroad section, and the multicolored model locomotives andcars looked like reassuring playthings out of a Toyland, Madurodam,or Disney World. By now I had grown accustomed to alternatingsurges of anxiety and self-confidence, terror and skepticism (isthat, perhaps, how illness starts?), and I told myself