The Name of the Rose (67 page)

“Why? I would match my wit with the wit of others. It would be a better world than the one where the fire and red-hot iron of Bernard Gui humiliate the fire and red-hot iron of Dolcino.”

“You yourself would by then be caught in the Devil's plot. You would fight on the other side at the field of Armageddon, where the final conflict must take place. But by that day the church must be able to impose once again its rule on the conflict. Blasphemy does not frighten us, because even in the cursing of God we recognize the deformed image of the wrath of Jehovah, who curses the rebellious angels. We are not afraid of the violence of those who kill the shepherds in the name of some fantasy of renewal, because it is the same violence as that of the princes who tried to destroy the people of Israel. We are not afraid of the severity of the Donatists, the mad suicide of the Circumcellions, the lust of the Bogomils, the proud purity of the Albigensians, the flagellants' need for blood, the evil madness of the Brothers of the Free Spirit: we know them all and we know the root of their sins, which is also the root of our holiness. We are not afraid, and, above all, we know how to destroy them—better, how to allow them to destroy themselves, arrogantly carrying to its zenith the will to die that is born from their own nadir. Indeed, I would say their presence is precious to us, it is inscribed in the plan of God, because their sin prompts our virtue, their cursing encourages our hymn of praise, their undisciplined penance regulates our taste for sacrifice, their impiety makes our piety shine, just as the Prince of Darkness was necessary, with his rebellion and his desperation, to make the glory of God shine more radiantly, the beginning and end of all hope. But if one day—and no longer as plebeian exception, but as ascesis of the learned, devoted to the indestructible testimony of Scripture—the art of mockery were to be made acceptable, and to seem noble and liberal and no longer mechanical; if one day someone could say (and be heard), ‘I laugh at the Incarnation,' then we would have no weapons to combat that blasphemy, because it would summon the dark powers of corporal matter, those that are affirmed in the fart and the belch, and the fart and the belch would claim the right that is only of the spirit, to breathe where they list!”

“Lycurgus had a statue erected to laughter.”

“You read that in the libellus of Cloritian, who tried to absolve mimes of the sin of impiety, and where it is said that a sick man was healed by a doctor who helped him laugh. What need was there to heal him, if God had established that his earthly day had reached its end?”

“I don't believe the doctor cured him. He taught him to laugh at his illness.”

“Illness is not exorcised. It is destroyed.”

“With the body of the sick man.”

“If necessary.”

“You are the Devil,” William said then.

Jorge seemed not to understand. If he had been able to see, I would say he stared at his interlocutor with a dazed look. “I?” he said.

“Yes. They lied to you. The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns whence he came. You are the Devil, and like the Devil you live in darkness. If you wanted to convince me, you have failed. I hate you, Jorge, and if I could, I would lead you downstairs, across the ground, naked, with fowl's feathers stuck in your asshole and your face painted like a juggler and a buffoon, so the whole monastery would laugh at you and be afraid no longer. I would like to smear honey all over you and then roll you in feathers, and take you on a leash to fairs, to say to all: He was announcing the truth to you and telling you that the truth has the taste of death, and you believed, not in his words, but in his grimness. And now I say to you that, in the infinite whirl of possible things, God allows you also to imagine a world where the presumed interpreter of the truth is nothing but a clumsy raven, who repeats words learned long ago.”

“You are worse than the Devil, Minorite,” Jorge said. “You are a clown, like the saint who gave birth to you all. You are like your Francis, who de toto corpore fecerat linguam, who preached sermons giving a performance like a mountebank's, who confounded the miser by putting gold pieces in his hand, who humiliated the nuns' devotion by reciting the ‘Miserere' instead of the sermon, who begged in French, and who disguised himself as a tramp to confound the gluttonous monks, who flung himself naked in the snow, spoke with animals and transformed the very mystery of the Nativity into a village spectacle, called the lamb of Bethlehem by imitating the bleat of a sheep. . . . It was a good school. Was that Friar Diotisalvi of Florence not a Minorite?”

“Yes.” William smiled. “The one who went to the convent of the preachers and said he would not accept food if first they did not give him a piece of Brother John's tunic to preserve as a relic, and when he was given it he wiped his behind and threw it in the dungheap and with a stick rolled it around in the dung, shouting: Alas, help me, brothers, because I dropped the saint's relic in the latrine!”

“This story amuses you, apparently. Perhaps you would like to tell me also the one about that other Minorite Friar Paul Millemosche, who one day fell full length on the ice; when his fellow citizens mocked him and one asked him whether he would not like to lie on something better, he said to the man: Yes, your wife . . . That is how you and your brothers seek the truth.”

“That is how Francis taught people to look at things from another direction.”

“But we have disciplined them. You saw them yesterday, your brothers. They have rejoined our ranks, they no longer speak like the simple. The simple must not speak. This book would have justified the idea that the tongue of the simple is the vehicle of wisdom. This had to be prevented, which I have done. You say I am the Devil, but it is not true: I have been the hand of God.”

“The hand of God creates; it does not conceal.”

“There are boundaries beyond which it is not permitted to go. God decreed that certain papers should bear the words ‘hic sunt leones.'”

“God created the monsters, too. And you. And He wants everything to be spoken of.”

Jorge reached out his shaking hands and drew the book to him. He held it open but turned it around, so that William could still see it in the right position. “Then why,” he said, “did He allow this text to be lost over the course of the centuries, and only one copy to be saved, and the copy of that copy, which had ended up God knows where, to remain buried for years in the hands of an infidel who knew no Greek, and then to lie abandoned in the secrecy of an old library, where I, not you, was called by Providence to find it and to hide it for more years still? I know, I know as if I saw it written in adamantine letters, with my eyes, which see things you do not see, I know that this was the will of the Lord, and I acted, interpreting it. In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

In which the ecpyrosis takes place, and because of excess virtue the forces of hell prevail.

 

The old man was silent. He held both hands open on the book, as if caressing its pages, flattening them the better to read them, or as if he wanted to protect the book from a raptor's talons.

“All of this, in any case, has been to no avail,” William said to him. “Now it is over. I have found you, I have found the book, and the others died in vain.”

“Not in vain,” Jorge said. “Perhaps there were too many of them. And if you needed proof that this book is accursed, you have had it. And to ensure they have not died in vain, one more death will not be too many.”

He spoke, and with his fleshless, diaphanous hands he began slowly tearing to strips and shreds the limp pages of the manuscript, stuffing them into his mouth, slowly swallowing as if he were consuming the host and he wanted to make it flesh of his flesh.

William looked at him, fascinated, and seemed not to grasp what was happening. Then he recovered himself and leaned forward, shouting, “What are you doing?” Jorge smiled, baring his bloodless gums, as a yellowish slime trickled from his pale lips over the sparse white hairs on his chin.

“You were awaiting the sound of the seventh trumpet, were you not? Now listen to what the voice says: Seal what the seven thunders have said and do not write it, take and devour it, it will make bitter your belly but to your lips it will be sweet as honey. You see? Now I seal that which was not to be said, in the grave I become.”

He laughed, he, Jorge. For the first time I heard him laugh. . . . He laughed with his throat, though his lips did not assume the shape of gaiety, and he seemed almost to be weeping. “You did not expect it, William, not this conclusion, did you? This old man, by the grace of God, wins once more, does he not?” And as William tried to take the book away from him, Jorge, who sensed the movement, feeling the vibration of the air, drew back, clasping the volume to his chest with his left hand while his right went on tearing the pages and cramming them into his mouth.

He was on the other side of the table, and William, who could not reach him, tried abruptly to move around the obstacle. But he knocked over his stool, catching his habit in it, so that Jorge was able to perceive the disturbance. The old man laughed again, louder this time, and with unexpected rapidity thrust out his right hand, groping for the lamp. Guided by the heat, he reached the flame and pressed his hand over it, unafraid of pain, and the light went out. The room was plunged into darkness, and for the last time we heard the laughter of Jorge, who said, “Find me now! Now I am the one who sees best!” Then he was silent and did not make another sound, moving with those silent footsteps that always made his appearances so unexpected; and we heard only, from time to time, in different parts of the room, the sound of the tearing paper.

“Adso!” William cried. “Stay by the door. Don't let him go out!”

But he had spoken too late, because I, who for some moments had been yearning to fling myself on the old man, had jumped forward when the darkness fell, trying to circle the table on the side opposite the one around which my master had moved. Too late I realized I had enabled Jorge to gain the door, because the old man could move in the dark with extraordinary confidence. We heard a sound of tearing paper behind us—somewhat muffled, because it came from the next room. And at the same time we heard another sound, a harsh, progressive creaking, the groan of hinges.

“The mirror!” William cried. “He is shutting us inside!” Led by the sound, we both rushed toward the entrance; I stumbled over a stool and bruised my leg but paid no heed, because in a flash I realized that if Jorge shut us in we would never get out: in the darkness we would never find the way to open the door, not knowing what had to be maneuvered on this side, or how.

I believe William moved with the same desperation as I did, because I felt him beside me as both of us, reaching the threshold, pressed ourselves against the back of the mirror, which was closing toward us. We arrived in time; the door stopped, then gave way and reopened. Obviously Jorge, sensing the conflict was unequal, had left. We came out of the accursed room, but now we had no idea where the old man was heading, and the darkness was still complete.

All of a sudden I remembered: “Master! I have the flint with me!”

“What are you waiting for, then?” William cried. “Find the lamp and light it!” I rushed back in the darkness, into the finis Africae, groping for the lamp. I found it at once, by divine miracle, then dug inside my scapular and pulled out the flint. My hands were trembling, and two or three times I failed before I was able to light it, as William gasped at the door, “Hurry, hurry!” Finally I made a light.

“Hurry!” William urged me again. “Otherwise the old man will eat up all of Aristotle!”

“And die!” I cried in anguish, overtaking him and joining in the search.

“I don't care whether he dies, damn the monster!” William cried, peering in every direction, moving at random. “With what he has eaten, his fate is already sealed. But I want the book!”

Then he stopped and added, more calmly, “Wait. If we continue like this, we'll never find him. Hush: we'll remain still for a moment.” We stiffened, in silence. And in the silence we heard, not far away, the sound of a body bumping into a case, and the racket of some falling books. “That way!” we shouted, together.

We ran in the direction of the noise, but soon realized we would have to slow our pace. In fact, outside the finis Africae, the library was filled that evening with gusts of air that hissed and moaned, in proportion to the strong wind outside. Heightened by our speed, they threatened to put out our light, so painfully recovered. Since we could not move faster, we would have to make Jorge move more slowly. But William had just the opposite idea and shouted, “We've caught you, old man; now we have light!” And it was a wise decision, because the revelation probably upset Jorge, who moved faster, compromising his magic sensibility, his gift for seeing in the darkness. Soon we heard another noise, and, following it, when we entered room Y of
YSPANIA
, we saw him lying on the floor, the book still in his hands, as he attempted to pull himself to his feet among the books that had spilled from the table he had struck and overturned. He was trying to stand, but he went on tearing the pages, determined to devour his prey as quickly as possible.

By the time we overtook him he was on his feet; sensing our presence, he confronted us, moving backward. His face, in the reddish glow of the lamp, now seemed horrible to us: the features were distorted, a malignant sweat streaked his brow and cheeks, his eyes, usually a deathly white, were bloodshot, from his mouth came scraps of parchment, and he looked like a ravening beast who had stuffed himself and could no longer swallow his food. Disfigured by anxiety, by the menace of the poison now flowing abundantly through his veins, by his desperate and diabolical determination, the venerable figure of the old man now seemed disgusting and grotesque. At other moments he might have inspired laughter, but we, too, were reduced to the condition of animals, dogs stalking their quarry.