The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana

by Umberto Eco

  At that time I knew how babies were born, but my ideas about what led up to that were vague. I had heard my friends talking about wanks and other kinds of touching, but I never dared do further research. Still, I did not want to make a bad impression on Gragnola. I nodded silently, solemnly.

  "God could have said, for instance, You can screw, but only to make babies, especially since at that time there weren’t enough people in the world. But the ten commandments don’t say that: on the one hand, you can’t covet your friend’s wife and on the other you can’t commit impure acts. So, then, when is screwing allowed? I mean really, you’re trying to make a law that works for the whole world- when the Romans, who weren’t God, made laws it was stuff that still makes sense today-and God tosses down a Decalogue that doesn’t tell you the most important things? You’ll probably say: Sure, but the prohibition against impure acts forbids screwing outside of marriage. Are you sure that was really the case? What were impure acts for the Hebrews? They had very strict rules, for example they couldn’t eat pork, nor cows that had been killed in certain ways, and from what I’m told not even whitebait. So the impure acts are all the things that the people in power have prohibited. Which are? All the things that the people in power have defined as impure acts. Just look around, Fat Head claimed it was impure to speak ill of Fascism, and he’d send you off to confinement if you did. It was impure to be a bachelor, so you paid the bachelor tax. It was impure to fly a red flag. And so on and so on and so on. And now we come to the last commandment: Don’t covet other people’s stuff. But have you ever asked yourself why this commandment exists, when you’ve already got Don’t steal? If you covet a bike like the one your friend has, is that a sin? No, not if you don’t steal it from him. Don Cognasso will tell you that this commandment prohibits envy, which is certainly an ugly thing. But there’s bad envy, which is when your friend has a bicycle and you don’t, and you hope he breaks his neck going down a hill, and there’s good envy, which is when you want a bike like his and work your butt off to be able to buy one, even a used one, and it’s good envy that makes the world go round. And then there’s another envy, which is justice envy, which is when you can’t see any reason why a few people have everything and others are dying of hunger. And if you feel this fine sort of envy, which is socialist envy, you get busy trying to make a world in which riches are better distributed. But that’s exactly what the commandment prohibits you from doing: Don’t covet more than you have, respect the rule of property. In this world there are those who own two fields of grain just because they inherited them, and there are those who toil in those fields for a crust of bread, and the ones toiling must not covet the owner’s fields, otherwise the state will be ruined and we’ll have a revolution. The tenth commandment prohibits revolution. Therefore, my dear boy, don’t kill and don’t steal from poor kids like yourself, but go ahead and covet what other people have taken from you. That’s the sun of the coming day, and that’s why our comrades are staying up there in the mountains, to get rid of Fat Head, who rose to power funded by agrarian landowners and by Hitler’s toadies, Hitler who wanted to conquer the world so that that guy Krupp who builds Berthas this long could sell more cannons. But you, how could you ever understand about these things, you who grew up memorizing oaths of obedience to Il Duce’s orders?"

  "No, I understand, even if not everything."

  "I sure hope so."

  That night I dreamed of Il Duce.

  One day we went walking through the hills. I had thought Gragnola was going to tell me about the beauties of nature, as he had done in the past, but on that day he pointed out only dead things, dried cow dung with flies buzzing around it, a vine infected with downy mildew, a row of processionary caterpillars that were going to kill a tree, some potato plants with eyes larger than the tubers, which were now inedible, an animal carcass in a ditch, so putrefied that you could no longer tell whether it was a marten or a hare. And he smoked one Milit after another, excellent for TB, he would say, they disinfect your lungs.

  "You see kid, the world is dominated by evil things. Indeed, by Evil with a capital E. And I’m not just talking about the evil of man killing his fellow man for a few coins, or the evil of the SS hanging our comrades. I’m talking about Evil itself, the thing that rotted my lungs, that makes a crop go bad, or that lets a hailstorm reduce a man who owns a small vineyard and nothing else to misery. Have you ever asked yourself why Evil exists in the world, and especially

  death, when people like living so much, and one fine day death comes and carries them off, rich and poor alike, even babies? Have you ever heard anyone talk about the death of the universe? I read and I know: the universe, I mean the whole thing, the stars, the sun, the Milky Way, is like an electric battery that runs and runs, but all the while it’s running down, and one day it will run out. End of the universe. The Evil of evils is that the universe itself has been condemned to death. Since birth, you might say. So what kind of world is that, where Evil exists? Wouldn’t a world without Evil be better?"

  "Well, yeah," I philosophized.

  "Of course, you could say that the world was born by mistake, the world is a sickness afflicting the universe, which even before we came along wasn’t feeling so great, and one fine day the open sore that is our solar system appears, and us with it. But the stars, the Milky Way, and the sun don’t know they’re bound to die, so it doesn’t bother them. We, on the other hand, who have been born out of this sickness of the universe, we have the bad luck to be bright boys and to understand that we’re bound to die. So not only are we victims of Evil, but we know it. Cheery stuff."

  "But it’s atheists who say that the world wasn’t made by anyone, and you say you’re not an atheist…"

  "I’m not because I can’t bring myself to believe that all these things we see around us-the way trees and fruits grow, and the solar system, and our brains-came about by chance. They’re too well made. And therefore there must have been a creating mind. God."

  "So then?"

  "So then, how do you reconcile God with Evil?"

  "Off the top of my head I’m not sure, let me think about it…"

  "Ah yes, let me think about it, he says, as if the greatest minds haven’t been thinking about it for century upon century…"

  "And what did they end up with?"

  "Diddly-squat. Evil, they said, was brought into the world by the rebel angels. Oh really? God sees and foresees all, and he didn’t know the rebel angels were going to rebel? Why did he create them if he knew they were going to rebel? That’s like somebody making car tires that he knows will blow out after two kilometers. He’d be a prick. But no, he went ahead and created them, and afterward he was happy as a clam, look how clever I am, I can even make angels… Then he waited for them to rebel (no doubt drooling in anticipation of their first false step) and then hurled them down into hell. If that’s the case, he’s a monster. Other philosophers had a different idea: Evil doesn’t exist outside of God, it’s inside him, like a sickness, he spends eternity trying to free himself of it. Poor guy, maybe that’s how it is. But since I know I’m tubercular, I would never bring children into the world, so as not to create other wretches, because TB is passed from father to son. And yet God, knowing he’s got the sickness he’s got, is going to make you a world that at best will be dominated by Evil? That’s sheer wickedness. And further, one of us might have a child without meaning to, might get a little reckless one night and not use a rubber, but God made the world because that’s exactly what he wanted to do."

  "What if it just slipped out of him, like sometimes pee does?"

  "You think you’re being funny, but that’s exactly what other sharp minds have thought. The world slipped out of God like piss slips out of us. The world is the result of his incontinence, like a man with an enlarged prostate."

  "What’s a prostate?"

  "It doesn’t matter, pretend I gave a different example. What matters is that the world slipped out of Him, that God just wasn’t able t
o hold it in, and that all this is the result of the Evil he carries inside him-that’s the only way to excuse God. We’re in shit up to our eyes, but he’s no better off himself. Then, however, all the pretty things they tell you at the Oratorio start falling like overripe fruit, things about God as the Good, as the perfect being who created the heavens and the earth. He created the heavens and the earth precisely because he was profoundly imperfect. That’s why he made the stars like batteries that can’t be recharged."

  "But hang on, maybe God did create a world where those of us in it are destined to die, but say he did it as a test, to make us earn paradise, and therefore eternal happiness."

  "Or burn in hell."

  "The ones who yield to the devil’s temptations."

  "You talk like theologians, who are all in bad faith. Like you, they say that Evil exists, but that God has given us the greatest gift in the world, which is our free will. We are free to do what God tells us to do or what the devil tempts us to do, and if we end up in hell it’s just because we haven’t been created as slaves but as free men, and it just so happens we’ve used our freedom badly, which is our own doing."

  "Exactly."

  "Exactly? But who told you that freedom is a gift? In other words, be careful not to confuse things. Our comrades in the mountains are fighting for freedom, but it’s freedom from other men who wanted to turn them into so many little machines. Freedom is a beautiful thing between one man and another; you don’t have the right to make me do and think what you want me to. And besides, our comrades were free to decide whether to go up into the mountains or to hide out somewhere. But the freedom that God granted me, what kind of freedom is that? The freedom to go to paradise or to hell, with no middle ground. You’re born and you’re forced to play a hand of briscola, and if you lose you suffer for all eternity. And what if I didn’t want to play this game? Fat Head, who among all his evil deeds actually did a few good things too, banned gambling houses, because those are places where people are tempted and end up ruining their lives. And don’t tell me people are free to go there or not. Better not to lead them into temptation. But here God has created us free and incredibly weak, exposed to temptation. You call that a gift? It’s as if I were to throw you down that escarpment and tell you, Don’t worry, you’re free to grab onto some shrub and haul yourself back up, or you can let yourself roll down until you’ve been reduced to the kind of minced meat they eat in Alba.

  You might ask: But why did you throw me down when I was doing just fine up there? And I would answer: To see how strong you were. A fine lark. You didn’t want to prove how strong you were, you were just happy not to fall."

  "Now you’re confusing me. What is it you believe, then?"

  "It’s simple, it just never occurred to anyone before: God is evil. Why do priests say God is good? Because he created us. But that’s precisely why he’s evil. God doesn’t have evil the way we have a headache. God is Evil. Maybe, seeing as he’s eternal, he wasn’t evil billions of years ago. Maybe he became that way, like kids who get bored in the summer and start tearing the wings off flies, to pass the time. Notice how if you think that God is evil, the whole question of Evil becomes crystal clear."

  "They’re all bad, then, even Jesus?"

  "Ah, no! Jesus is the only evidence that at least us men are capable of being good. To tell the truth, I’m not sure Jesus was God’s son, because it doesn’t make sense to me that a good guy like that could be born from such an evil father. I’m not even sure that Jesus really existed. Maybe we invented him ourselves, and that in itself would be a miracle, that our minds could come up with such a beautiful idea. Or maybe he did exist, was the best of men, and said he was the son of God with the best of intentions, to convince us that God was good. But if you read the Gospels closely, you’ll realize that in the end even Jesus realized that God was bad: he gets scared in the olive grove and asks, Let this cup pass from me, and zilch, God doesn’t listen; on the cross he shouts Father why hast thou forsaken me, and zilch, God turns his back. But Jesus showed us what a man can do to offset God’s wickedness. If God is evil, then we at least have to try to be good, forgive each other, refrain from doing each other harm, heal the sick, and turn the other cheek. We’ve got to help each other, seeing as God doesn’t help us. Do you see how great Jesus’ idea was? Imagine how much it must have irritated God. Forget the devil, Jesus was the only true enemy of God, and he’s the only friend us poor wretches have."

  "You must be some kind of heretic, like the ones they burned…" "I’m the only one who understands the truth, but unless I want to

  get burned I can’t go around speaking it, so you’re the only one I’ve

  told. Swear you won’t tell anyone."

  "I swear," I said, tracing a cross over my lips with my finger.

  I noticed that Gragnola always wore a long, thin leather sack that hung from his neck, beneath his shirt.

  "What’s that, Gragnola?"

  "A lancet."

  "Were you studying to be a doctor?"

  "I was studying philosophy. I was given the lancet in Greece by a doctor in my regiment, before he died. ‘I don’t need this anymore,’ he told me. ‘That grenade has opened my belly. What I need now is one of those kits, like women have, with a needle and thread. But this hole is past stitching up. Keep this lancet to remember me by’ And I’ve worn it ever since."

  "Why?"

  "Because I’m a coward. With the things I do and the things I know, if the SS or the Black Brigades catch me, they’ll torture me. If they torture me, I’ll talk, because evil scares me. And I’ll be sending my comrades to their deaths. This way, if they catch me, I’ll cut my throat with the lancet. It doesn’t hurt, only takes a second, sffft. I’ll be screwing them all: the Fascists because they won’t learn a thing, the priests because I’ll be a suicide and that’s a sin, and God because I’ll be dying when I choose and not when he chooses. Put that in your pipe and smoke it."

  Gragnola’s speeches left me sad. Not because I was sure they were evil, but because I feared they were good. I was tempted to discuss them with my grandfather, but I did not know how he would react. He and Gragnola might not have understood each other, though they were both anti-Fascists. Grandfather had resolved his problems with Merlo, and with Il Duce, in an amusing way. He had saved the four boys in the chapel, pulling one over on the Black Brigades, and that was it. He was not a churchgoer, but that did not mean he was atheist-if he were, why would he have set up the Nativity scene? If he believed in God, it was a jolly God, who would have had a good laugh seeing Merlo trying to vomit his guts out-Grandfather had saved God the trouble of sending Merlo to Hell, since after all that oil he would surely have been sent merely to purgatory, where he could relieve himself in peace. Gragnola, on the other hand, lived in a world made wretched by an evil God, and the only times I saw him smile with any tenderness were when he was talking to me about Socrates or Jesus. Both of whom, I would remind myself, were killed, so I did not see what there was to smile about.

  And yet he was not mean, he loved the people around him. He had it in only for God, and that must have been a real chore, because it was like throwing rocks at a rhinoceros-the rhinoceros never even notices and continues going about its rhino business, and meanwhile you are red with rage and ripe for a heart attack.

  When was it that my friends and I began the Great Game? In a world where everyone was shooting at everyone else, we needed an enemy. And we chose the kids up in San Martino, that village on the peak above the plunging Gorge.

  The Gorge was even worse than Amalia had described it. You really could not climb up it-and forget coming down-because you would lose your footing at every step. Where there were no brambles, the earth fell away beneath you, you might see a thicket of acacia or blackberry with an opening right in the middle and think you had found a path, but it would be just a random patch of stony ground, and after ten steps you would start to slip, then fall to one side and tumble at least twenty meters. Even if you s
urvived the fall without breaking any bones, the thorns would scratch your eyes out. On top of that, it was said to be thick with vipers.

  The people of San Martino had a mad fear of the Gorge, in part because of the hellcats, and anyone who would enshrine St. Antoninus, a mummy that looked like something risen from the grave to curdle a new mother’s milk, would believe in hellcats. They made ideal enemies, since in our minds they were all Fascists. In reality that was not the case, it was just that two brothers from San Martino had joined the Black Brigades, while their two younger brothers remained in the village, the ringleaders of the bunch up there. But still, the town was attached to its sons who had gone off to war, and in Solara it was whispered that the people of San Martino were not to be trusted.

  Fascists or not, we used to say that the boys of San Martino were no better than animals. The fact is that if you live in such an accursed place, you have to get up to some mischief every day, just to feel alive. They had to come down to Solara for school, and we who lived in town used to watch them as if they were gypsies. Many of us would bring a snack, bread and marmalade, and they were lucky if they had been given a wormy apple. In short, they had to do something, and on several occasions they bombarded us with rocks as we approached the gate of the Oratorio. We had to make them pay. So we decided to go up to San Martino and attack them while they played ball in the church piazza.