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

you would have chosen the right one¡Xhad you had theOpportunity? I wonder how many of those who opt for fighting todaydo it for that reason. But a contrived Opportunity is not the rightOpportunity.

Can you call yourself acoward simply because the courage of others seems to you out ofproportion to the triviality of the occasion? Thus wisdom createscowards. And thus you miss Opportunity while spending your life onthe lookout for it. You have to seize Opportunity instinctively,without knowing at the time that it is the Opportunity. Is itpossible that I really did seize it once, without knowing? How canyou feel like a coward because you were born in the wrong decade?The answer: You feel like a coward because once you were acoward.

But suppose you passedup the Opportunity because you felt it was inadequate?

* * *

Describe the house in***, isolated on the hill among the vineyards¡Xdon't they callthose breast-shaped hills?¡Xand then the road that led to the edgeof town, to the last row of houses (or the first, depending on thedirection you come from). The little evacuee who abandons theprotection of his family and ventures into the tentacular town,walking the broad avenue, skirting the Alley he so enviouslyfears.

The Alley was thegathering place of the Alley gang. Country boys, dirty, loud. I wastoo citified: better to stay away from them. But to reach thesquare, and the newspaper kiosk and the stationery store, unless Iessayed a circumnavigation almost equatorial and quite undignified,the only course was to go along the Canal. And the boys of theAlley gang were little gentlemen compared to the Canal gang, namedafter a former stream, now a drainage ditch, that ran through thepoorest part of town. The Canal kids were filthy subproletarians,and violent.

The Alley kids couldn'tcross the Canal area without being attacked and beaten up. At firstI didn't know that I was an Alley kid. I had just arrived, butalready the Canal gang had identified me as an enemy. I walkedthrough their area with a children's magazine open before my face,reading as I went. They saw me. I ran. They chased me, throwingstones. One stone went right through a page of the magazine, whichI was still holding in front of me as I ran, trying to retain alittle dignity. I got away but lost the magazine. The next day Idecided to join the Alley gang.

I presented myself attheir Sanhedrin and was greeted with cackles. My hair was verythick at the time, and it tended to stand up on my head a bit likeStruwwelpeter's. The style in those days, as shown in movies andads, or on Sunday strolls after Mass, featured young men withbroad-shouldered, double-breasted jackets, greased mustaches, andgleaming hair combed straight back and stuck to their skulls. Andthat's what I wanted, sleek hair like that. In the market square,on a Monday, I spent what for me was an enormous sum on some boxesof brilliantine thick as beanflower honey. Then I spent hourssmearing it on until my hair was laminated, a leaden cap, acamauro. Then I put on a net, to keep the hair tightly compressed.The Alley gang had seen me go by wearing the net, and had shoutedtaunts in that harsh dialect of theirs, which I understood butcouldn't speak. That particular day, after staying two hours in thehouse with the net on, I took it off, checked the splendid resultin the mirror, and set out to meet the gang to which I hoped toswear allegiance. I approached them just as the brilliantine waslosing its glutinous power and my hair was again assuming, in slowmotion, its vertical position. Delight among the Alley kids, in acircle around me, nudging one another. I asked to beadmitted.

Unfortunately, I spokein Italian. An outsider. Their leader, Marti-netti, who seemed agiant to me then, came forward, splendid, barefoot. He decided Ishould undergo one hundred kicks in the behind. Perhaps the kickswere meant to reawaken the serpent Kundalini. I agreed and stoodagainst the wall. Two sergeants held my arms, and I received onehundred barefoot kicks. Martinetti applied himself to his task withvigor and skill, striking sideways so he wouldn't hurt his toes.The gang served as chorus for the ritual, keeping count in theirdialect. Then they shut me up in a rabbit hutch for half an hour,while they passed the time in guttural conversation. They let meout when I complained that my legs were numb. I was proud because Ihad been able to stand up to the liturgy of a savage tribe. I was aman called Horse.

In *** in those dayswere stationed latter-day Teutonic Knights, who were notparticularly alert, because the partisans hadn't yet madethemselves felt¡Xthis was toward the end of ¡¥43, the beginning of¡¥44. One of our first exploits was to slip into a shed, while someof us flattered the soldier on guard duty, a great Langobard eatingan enormous sandwich of¡Xwe thought, and were horrified¡Xsalami andjam. The decoys distracted the German, praising his weapons, whilethe rest of us crept through some loose planks in the back of theshed and stole a few sticks of TNT. I don't believe the explosivewas ever used subsequently, but the idea was, according toMartinetti's plan, to set it off in the countryside, for purelypyrotechnical purposes and by methods I now know were very crudeand would not have worked. Later, the Germans were replaced by theFascist marines of the Decima Mas, who set up a roadblock near theriver, right at the crossroads where the girls from the school ofSanta Maria Ausiliatrice came down the avenue at six in theevening. Martinetti convinced the Decima marines (who couldn't havebeen over eighteen) to tie together a bunch of hand grenades leftby the Germans, the ones with a long pin, and remove the safetiesso they could explode at the water's edge at the exact moment thegirls arrived. Martinetti knew how to calculate the timing. Heexplained it to the Fascists, and the effect was prodigious: asheet of water rose up along the bank in a thunderous din just asthe girls were turning the corner. General flight, much squeaking,and we and the Fascists split our sides laughing. The survivors ofAllied imprisonment