by Umberto Eco
Belbo seemed to have got over the incident with Lorenza, and I built a fire under him to get on with his theory. "We can look at Hitler's power as a rabble-rouser also from this point of view," I said. "Physically, he was a toad, he had a shrill voice. How could such a man whip crowds into a frenzy? He must have possessed psychic powers. Perhaps, instructed by some Druid from his hometown, he knew how to establish contact with the subterranean currents. Perhaps he was a living valve, a biological menhir transmitting the currents to the faithful in the Nuremberg stadium. For a while it worked for him; then his batteries ran down."
100
To All the World: I declare the earth is hollow and habitable within; containing a number of solid, concentric spheres; one within the other, and that it is open at the poles twelve or sixteen degrees.
—J. Cloves Symmes of Ohio, late Captain of Infantry, April 10,
1818; quoted in Sprague de Camp and Ley, Lands Beyond,
New York, Rinchart, 1952, x
"Congratulations, Casaubon. In your innocence you hit upon the truth. Hitler's one genuine obsession was the underground currents. He believed in the theory of the hollow earth, Hohlweltlehre."
"I'm leaving. I've got gastritis," Diotallevi said.
"Wait. We're getting to the best part. The earth is hollow: we don't live outside it, on the convex crust, but inside, on the concave surface. What we think is the sky is actually a gaseous mass, with points of brilliant light, which fills the interior of our globe. All astronomical measurements have to be reinterpreted. The sky is not infinite: it's circumscribed. The sun, if it really exists, is no bigger than it looks, a mere crumb having a diameter of thirty centimeters at the center of the earth. The Greeks had already suspected as much."
"You made this up," Diotallevi said wearily.
"I did not! Somebody had the idea at the beginning of the last century, an American, a man named Symmes. Then, at the end of the century, another American—name of Teed—revived the notion, supported by alchemistic experiments and a reading of Isaiah. After the First World War, the hollow-earth theory was perfected by a German—I forget his name—who founded the Hohlweltlehre movement. Hitler and his cronies discovered that Hohlweltlehre corresponded exactly to their principles, and they even, according to one report, misaimed some of the V-is because they calculated their trajectories on the basis of a concave, not a convex, surface. Hitler at this point was convinced that the King of the World was himself and that the Nazi General Staff members were the Unknown Superiors. Where does the King of the World live? Beneath; not above.
"This hypothesis inspired Hitler to change the whole direction of German research toward the concept of the final map, the interpretation of the Pendulum! The six Templar groups had to be reassembled; everything had to be begun again from the beginning. Consider the logic of Hitler's conquests.... First, Danzig, to have under his control the classical places of the Teutonic group. Next he conquered Paris, to get his hands on the Pendulum and the Eiffel Tower, and he contacted the synarchic groups and put them into the Vichy government. Then he made sure of the neutrality—in effect, the cooperation—of the Portuguese group. His fourth objective was, of course, England; but we know that wasn't easy. Meanwhile, with the African campaigns, he tried to reach Palestine, but here again he failed. Then he aimed at the dominion of the Paulician territories, by invading the Balkans and Russia.
"When Hitler had four-sixths of the Plan in his hands, he sent Hess on a secret mission to England to propose an alliance. The Baconians, however, refused. He had another idea: those who were holding the most important part of the secret must be his eternal enemies the Jews. He didn't look for them in Jerusalem, where few were left. The Jerusalemite group's piece of the message wasn't in Palestine anyway; it was in the possession of a group of the Diaspora. And so the Holocaust is explained."
"How is that?"
"Just think for a moment. Suppose you wanted to commit genocide..."
"Excuse me," Diotallevi said, "but this is going too far. My stomach hurts. I'm going home."
"Wait, damn it. When the Templars were disemboweling the Saracens, you enjoyed yourself, because it was so long ago. Now you're being delicate, like a petty intellectual. We're remaking history; we can't be squeamish."
We let him continue, subdued by his vehemence.
"The striking thing about the genocide of the Jews is the lengthiness of the procedures. First they're kept in camps and starved, then they're stripped naked, then the showers, then the scrupulous piling up of the corpses, and the sorting and storing of clothes, the listing of personal effects.... None of this makes sense if it was just a question of killing them. It makes sense if it was a question of looking for something, for a message that one of those millions of people—the Jerusalemite representative of the Thirty-six Invisibles—was hiding in the hem of a garment, or in his mouth, or had tattooed on his body.... Only the Plan explains the inexplicable bureaucracy of the genocide! Hitler was searching the Jews for the clue that would allow him to determine, with the Pendulum, the exact point under the earth's concave vault where the telluric currents converged.
"And now you see the beauty of the idea. The telluric currents become equated with the celestial currents. The hollow-earth theory gives new life to the age-old hermetic intuition, namely, that what lies beneath is equal to what lies above! The Mystic Pole coincides with the Heart of the Earth. The secret pattern of the stars is nothing other than the secret pattern of the subterranean passages of Agarttha. There is no longer any difference between heaven and hell, and the Grail, the lapis exillis, is the lapis ex coelis, the philosopher's stone, the terminal, the limit, the chthonian uterus of the empyrean! And if Hitler can identify that point in the hollow center of the earth, which is also the exact center of the sky, he will be Master of the World, whose king he is by right of race. And that's why, to the very end, in the depths of his bunker, he thought he could still control the Mystic Pole."
"Stop," Diotallevi said. "Enough is enough. I'm sick."
"He's really sick. It's not an ideological protest," I said.
Belbo finally understood. Concerned, he went to Diotallevi, who was leaning against the desk, apparently on the verge of fainting. "Sorry, my friend. I got carried away. You're sure it's not anything I said? We've joked together for twenty years, you and I. Maybe you do have gastritis. Look, try a Merankol tablet and a hot-water bottle. Come, I'll drive you home. Then you'd better call a doctor, have yourself looked at."
Diotallevi said he could take a taxi home, he wasn't at death's door yet. He just had to lie down. Yes, he would call a doctor, he promised. And it wasn't the Holocaust business that had upset him; he had been feeling-bad since the previous evening. Belbo, relieved, went with him to the taxi.
When he came back, he looked worried. "Now that I think about it, Diotallevi hasn't been himself for several weeks. Those circles under his eyes ... It's not fair; I should have died of cirrhosis ten years ago, and here I am, the picture of health, whereas he lives like an ascetic and has gastritis or maybe worse. If you ask me, it's an ulcer. To hell with the Plan. We're not living right."
"A Merankol will fix him up," I said.
"Yes, and a hot-water bottle on his stomach. Let's hope he acts sensibly."
101
Qui operatur in Cabala ... si errabit in opere aut non purificatus accesserit, deuorabitur ab Azazale.
—Pico della Mirandola, Conclusiones Magicae
Diotallevi's condition took a decided turn for the worse in late November. He called the office to say he was going into the hospital. The doctor had told him there was nothing to worry about, but it would be a good idea to have some tests.
Belbo and I somehow connected Diotallevi's illness with the Plan, which perhaps we had carried too far. It was irrational, but we felt guilty. This was the second time I seemed to be Belbo's partner in crime. Once, we had remained silent together, withholding information from De Angelis; and now we had talked too much. We told each othe
r this was silly, but we couldn't shake off our uneasiness. And so, for a month or more, we did not discuss the Plan.
Meanwhile, after he had been out for two weeks or so, Diotallevi dropped by to tell us, in a nonchalant tone, that he had asked Garamond for sick leave. A treatment had been recommended to him. He didn't go into details, but it involved his reporting to the hospital every two or three days, and it would leave him somewhat weak. I didn't see how he could get much weaker; his face now was as white as his hair.
"And forget about those stories," he said. "They're bad for the health, as you'll see. It's the Rosicrucians' revenge."
"Don't worry," Belbo said to him, smiling. "We'll make life really unpleasant for those Rosicrucians, and they'll leave you alone. Nothing to it." And he snapped his fingers.
The treatment lasted until the beginning of the new year. I was absorbed by my history of magic—the real thing, serious stuff, I said to myself, not our nonsense. Garamond came by at least once a day to ask for news of Diotallevi. "And please, gentlemen, let me know if any need arises, any problem, any circumstance in which I, the firm, can do something for our admirable friend. For me, he's like a son—more, a brother—and thank heaven this is a civilized country, whatever people may say; we have a public health system we can be proud of."
Agliè expressed concern, asked for the name of the hospital, and telephoned its director, a dear friend (who, moreover, happened to be the brother of an SFA with whom Agliè was on excellent terms). Diotallevi would be treated with special consideration.
Lorenza showed up often to ask for news. This should have made Belbo happy, but he took it as another indication that his prognosis was not good. Lorenza was there, but still elusive, because she wasn't there for him.
Shortly before Christmas, I'd caught a snatch of their conversation. Lorenza was saying to him: "The snow is just right, and they have charming little rooms. You can do cross-country skiing, can't you?" I concluded that they would be spending New Year's Eve together. But one day after Epiphany, when Lorenza appeared in the corridor, Belbo said to her, "Happy New Year," and dodged her attempt to give him a hug.
102
Leaving this place, we came to a settlement known as Milestre ... where it is said that one known as the Old Man of the Mountain dwelled.... And he built, over high mountains surrounding a valley, a very thick and high wall, in a circuit of thirty miles, and it was entered by two doors, and they were hidden, cut into the mountain.
—Odorico da Pordenone, De rebus incognitis. Impressus F.sauri, 1513, xxi, p. 15
One day, at the end of January, as I was walking along Via Marchese Gualdi, where I had parked my car, I saw Salon coming out of Manutius. "A little chat with my friend Agliè," he said to me.
Friend? As I seemed to recall from the Piedmont party, Agliè was not fond of him. Was Salon snooping around Manutius, or was Agliè using him for some contact or other?
Salon didn't give me time to ponder this; he suggested a drink, and we ended up at Pilade's. I had never seen Salon in this part of town, but he greeted old Pilade as if they had known each other for years. We sat down. He asked me how my history of magic was progressing. So he knew about that, too. I prodded him about the hollow-earth theory and about Sebottendorf, the man Belbo had mentioned.
He laughed. "You people certainly draw your share of madmen. I'm not familiar with this business of the earth being hollow. As for Sebottendorf, now there was a character.... He gave Himmler and company some ideas that were suicidal for the German people."
"What ideas?
"Oriental fancies. That man, wary of the Jews, ended up worshiping the Arabs and the Turks. Did you know that on Himmler's desk, along with Mein Kampf, there was always the Koran? Sebottendorf, fascinated in his youth by an occult Turkish sect, began studying Islamic gnosis. He said Führer but thought Old Man of the Mountain. When they all got together and founded the SS, they had in mind an organization like the Assassins.... Ask yourself why Germany and Turkey, in the First World War, were allies."
"How do you know these things?"
"I told you, I think, that my poor father worked for the Okhrana. Well, I remember in those days how the tsarist police were concerned about the Assassins. Rachkovsky got wind of it first.... But they gave up that trail, because if the Assassins were involved, then the Jews couldn't be, and the Jews were the danger. As always. The Jews went back to Palestine and made those others leave their caves. But the whole thing is complicated, confused. Let's leave it at that."
He seemed to regret having said so much, and hastily took his leave. Then another thing happened. I'm now sure I didn't dream it, but that day I thought it was a hallucination: as I watched Salon walk away from the bar, I saw him meet a man at the corner, an Oriental.
In any case, Salon had said enough to start my imagination working again. The Old Man of the Mountain and the Assassins were no strangers to me: I had mentioned them in my thesis. The Templars were accused of being in collusion with them. How could we have overlooked this?
So I began exercising my mind again, and my fingertips, going through old card files, and an idea came to me, an idea so spectacular that I couldn't restrain myself.
The next morning I burst into Belbo's office. "They got it all wrong. We got it all wrong."
"Take it easy, Casaubon. What are you talking about? Oh, my God, the Plan." Then he hesitated. "You probably don't know. There's bad news about Diotallevi. He won't speak. I called the hospital, but they refuse to give me the particulars because I'm not a relative. The man doesn't have any relatives, so who is there to act on his behalf? I don't like this reticence. A benign growth, they say, but the therapy wasn't enough. He should go back into the hospital for a month or so, and minor surgery may be indicated....In other words, those people aren't telling me the whole story, and I like this situation less and less."
I didn't know what to say. Embarrassed by my triumphal entry, I started leafing through papers. But Belbo couldn't resist. He was like a gambler who's been shown a pack of cards. "What the hell," he said. "Life goes on, unfortunately. What did you find?"
"Well, Hitler goes to all that trouble with the Jews, but he accomplishes nothing. Occultists throughout the world, for centuries, have studied Hebrew, rummaged in Hebrew texts, and at most they can draw a horoscope. Why?"
"H'm ... Because the Jerusalemites' fragment of the message is still hidden somewhere. Though the Paulicians' fragment never turned up either, as far as we know...."
"That's an answer worthy of Agliè, not of us. I have a better one. The Jews have nothing to do with it."
"What do you mean?"
"The Jews have nothing to do with the Plan. They can't. Picture the situation of the Templars, first in Jerusalem, then in their commanderies in Europe. The French knights meet the Germans, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Italians, the English: they all have contacts with the Byzantine area, and in particular they combat the Turk, an adversary with whom they fight but also maintain a gentlemanly relationship, a relationship of equals. Who were the Jews at that time, in Palestine? A religious and racial minority tolerated by the condescending Arabs but treated very badly by the Christians. We must remember that in the course of the various Crusades the ghettos were sacked as a matter of course and there were massacres all around. Is it conceivable that the Templars, snobs that they were, would exchange mystical information with the Jews? Never. And in the European commanderies, the Jews were considered usurers, were despised, people to be exploited, not trusted. We're talking about an alliance of knights, about a spiritual knighthood: would the Templars of Provins allow second-class citizens to join that? Out of the question."
"But what about all that Renaissance magic, and the study of cabala...?"
"That was only natural. By then we're close to the third meeting; they're champing at the bit, looking for shortcuts; Hebrew is a sacred and mysterious language; the cabalists have been busy on their own and to other ends. The Thirty-six scattered around the world get t
he idea that a mysterious language might conceal God knows what secrets. It was Pico della Mirandola who said that nulla nomina, ut significativa et in quantum nomina sunt, in magico opere virtutem habere non possunt, nisi sint Hebraica. Pico della Mirandola was a cretin."
"Bravo! Now you're talking!"
"Furthermore, as an Italian, he was excluded from the Plan. What did he know? So much the worse for Agrippa, Reuchlin, and their pals, who fell for that red herring. I'm reconstructing the story of a red herring, a false trail: is that clear? We let ourselves be influenced by Diotallevi, who was always cabalizing. He cabalized, so we put the Jews in the Plan. If he had been a scholar of Chinese culture, would we have put the Chinese in the Plan?"
"Maybe we would have."
