And so I did. I proceeded through three rooms, sticking close to the walls, light as a cat (or as a novice descending into the kitchen to steal cheese from the larder: an enterprise in which I excelled at Melk). I came to the threshold of the room from which the glow, quite faint, was coming. I slipped along the wall to a column that served as the right jamb, and I peered into the room. No one was there. A kind of lamp was set on the table, lighted, and it was smoking, flickering. It was not a lamp like ours: it seemed, rather, an uncovered thurible. It had no flame, but a light ash smoldered, burning something. I plucked up my courage and entered. On the table beside the thurible, a brightly colored book was lying open. I approached and saw four strips of different colors on the page: yellow, cinnabar, turquoise, and burnt sienna. A beast was set there, horrible to see, a great dragon with ten heads, dragging after him the stars of the sky and with his tail making them fall to earth. And suddenly I saw the dragon multiply, and the scales of his hide become a kind of forest of glittering shards that came off the page and took to circling around my head. I flung my head back and I saw the ceiling, of the room bend and press down toward me, then I heard something like the hiss of a thousand, serpents, but not frightening, almost seductive, and a woman appeared, bathed in light, and put her face to mine, breathing on me. I thrust her away with outstretched hands, and my hands seemed to touch the books in the case opposite, or to grow out of all proportion. I no longer realized where I was, where the earth was, and where the sky. In the center of the room I saw Berengar staring, at me with a hateful smile, oozing lust. I covered my face with my hands and my hands seemed the claws of a toad, slimy and webbed. I cried out, I believe; there was an acid taste in my mouth; I plunged into infinite darkness, which seemed to yawn wider and wider beneath me; and then I knew nothing further.
I woke again after a time I thought was centuries, hearing some blows pounding in my head. I was stretched out on the floor and William was slapping me on the cheeks. I was no longer in that room, and before my eyes was a scroll that said “Requiescant a laboribus suis,” “May they rest from their labors.”
“Come, come, Adso,” William was whispering to me. “There’s nothing. ...”
“Everything ...” I said, still delirious. “Over there, the beast ...”
“No beast. I found you raving underneath a table with a beautiful Mozarabic apocalypse on it, opened to the page of the mulier amicta sole confronting the dragon. But I realized from the odor that you had inhaled something dangerous and I carried you away immediately. My head also aches.”
“But what did I see?”
“You saw nothing. The fact is that some substances capable of inducing visions were burning there. I recognized the smell: it is an Arab stuff, perhaps the same that the Old Man of the Mountain gave his assassins to breathe before sending them off on their missions. And so we have explained the mystery of the visions. Someone puts magic herbs there during the night to convince importunate visitors that the library is guarded by diabolical presences. What did you experience, by the way?”
In confusion, as best I could recall, I told him of my vision, and William laughed: “For half of it you were developing what you had glimpsed in the book, and for the other half you let your desires and your fears speak out. This is the operation certain herbs set in action. Tomorrow we must talk about it with Severinus; I believe he knows more than he wants us to believe. They are herbs, only herbs, requiring none of those necromantic preparations the glazier talked to us about. Herbs, mirrors ... This place of forbidden knowledge is guarded by many and most cunning devices. Knowledge is used to conceal, rather than to enlighten. I don’t like it. A perverse mind presides over the holy defense of the library. But this has been a toilsome night; we must leave here for the present. You’re distraught and you need water and fresh air. It’s useless to try to open these windows: too high, and perhaps closed for decades. How could they think Adelmo had thrown himself down from here?”
Leave, William had said. As if it were easy. We knew the library could be reached only from one tower, the eastern one. But where were we at that moment? We had completely lost our orientation. We wandered, fearing never to emerge from that place again; I, still stumbling, seized with fits of vomiting; and William, somewhat worried about me and irritated by the inadequacy of his learning; but this wandering gave us, or gave him, an idea for the following day. We would come back to the library, assuming we ever got out of it, with a charred firebrand, or some other substance capable of leaving signs on the walls.
“To find the way out of a labyrinth,” William recited, “there is only one means. At every new junction, never seen before, the path we have taken will be marked with three signs. If, because of previous signs on some of the paths of the junction, you see that the junction has already been visited, you will make only one mark on the path you have taken. If all the apertures have already been marked, then you must retrace your steps. But if one or two apertures of the junction are still without signs, you will choose any one, making two signs on it. Proceeding through an aperture that bears only one sign, you will make two more, so that now the aperture bears three. All the parts of the labyrinth must have been visited if, arriving at a junction, you never take a passage with three signs, unless none of the other passages is now without signs.”
“How do you know that? Are you an expert on labyrinths?”
“No, I am citing an ancient text I once read.”
“And by observing this rule you get out?”
“Almost never, as far as I know. But we will try it, all the same. And besides, within the next day or so I will have lenses and time to devote myself more to the books. It may be that where the succession of scrolls confuses us, the arrangement of the books will give us a rule.”
“You’ll have your lenses? How will you find them again?”
“I said I’ll have lenses. I’ll have new ones made. I believe the glazier is eager for an opportunity of this kind, to try something new. As long as he has the right tools for grinding the bits of glass. When it comes to bits of glass, he has plenty in his workshop.”
As we roamed, seeking the way, suddenly, in the center of one room, I felt an invisible hand stroke my cheek, while a groan, not human and not animal, echoed in both that room and the next, as if a ghost were wandering from one to the other. I should have been prepared for the library’s surprises, but once again I was terrified and leaped backward. William must have had an experience similar to mine, because he was touching his cheek as he held up the light and looked around.
He raised one hand, examined the flame, which now seemed brighter, then moistened a finger and held it straight in front of him.
“It’s clear,” he said then, and showed me two points, on opposite walls, at a man’s height. Two narrow slits opened there, and if you put your hand to them you could feel the cold air coming from outside. Putting your ear to them, you could hear a rustling sound, as of a wind blowing outside.
“The library must, of course, have a ventilation system,” William said. “Otherwise the atmosphere would be stifling, especially in the summer. Moreover, those slits provide the right amount of humidity, so the parchments will not dry out. But the cleverness of the founders did not stop there. Placing the slits at certain angles, they made sure that on windy nights the gusts penetrating from these openings would encounter other gusts, and swirl inside the sequence of rooms, producing the sounds we have heard. Which, along with the mirrors and the herbs, increase the fear of the foolhardy who come in here, as we have, without knowing the place well. And we ourselves for a moment thought ghosts were breathing on our faces. We’ve realized it only now because the wind has sprung up only now. So this mystery, too, is solved. But we still don’t know how to get out!”
As we spoke, we wandered aimlessly, now bewildered, not bothering to read the scrolls, which seemed all alike. We came into a new heptagonal room, we went through the nearby rooms, we found no exit. We retraced our steps and walked
for almost an hour, making no effort to discover where we were. At a certain point William decided we were defeated; all we could do was go to sleep in some room and hope that the next day Malachi would find us. As we bemoaned the miserable end of our bold adventure, we suddenly found again the room from which the stairway descended. We fervently thanked heaven and went down in high spirits.
Once we were in the kitchen, we rushed to the fireplace and entered the corridor of the ossarium, and I swear that the deathly grin of those fleshless heads looked to me like the smiles of dear friends. We reentered the church and came out through the north door, finally sitting down happily on the tombstones. The beautiful night air seemed a divine balm. The stars shone around us and I felt the visions of the library were far away.
“How beautiful the world is, and how ugly labyrinths are,” I said, relieved.
“How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths,” my master replied.
We walked along the left side of the church, passed the great door (I looked away, to avoid seeing the elders of the Apocalypse: “Super thronos viginti quatuor”!), and crossed the cloister to reach the pilgrims’ hospice.
At the door of the building stood the abbot, staring at us sternly.. “I have been looking for you all night,” he said to William. “I did not find you in your cell, I did not find you in church. ...”
“We were pursuing a trail ...” William said vaguely, with visible embarrassment. The abbot gave him a long look, then said in a slow and severe voice, “I looked for you immediately after compline. Berengar was not in choir.”
“What are you telling me?” William said, with a cheerful expression. In fact, it was now clear to him who had been in ambush in the scriptorium.
“He was not in choir at compline,” the abbot repeated, and has not come back to his cell. Matins are about to ring, and we will now see if he reappears. Otherwise I fear some new calamity.”
At matins Berengar was absent.
THIRD DAY
FROM LAUDS TO PRIME
In which a bloodstained cloth is found in the cell of Berengar, who has disappeared; and that is all.
In setting down these words, I feel weary, as I felt that night—or, rather, that morning. What can be said? After matins the abbot sent most of the monks, now in a state of alarm, to seek everywhere; but without any result.
Toward lauds, searching Berengar’s cell, a monk found under the pallet a white cloth stained with blood. He showed it to the abbot, who drew the direst omens from it. Jorge was present, and as soon as he was informed, he said, “Blood?” as if the thing seemed improbable to him. They told Alinardo, who shook his head and said, “No, no, at the third trumpet death comes by water. ...”
William examined the cloth, then said, “Now everything is clear.”
“Where is Berengar?” they asked him.
“I don’t know,” he answered. Aymaro heard him and raised his eyes to heaven, murmuring to Peter of Sant’Albano, “Typically English.”
Toward prime, when the sun was already up, servants were sent to explore the toot of the cliff, all around the walls. They came back at terce, having found nothing.
William told me that we could not have done any better. We had to await events. And he went to the forges, to engage in a deep conversation with Nicholas, the master glazier.
I sat in church, near the central door, as the Masses were said. And so I fell devoutly asleep and slept a long time, because young people seem to need sleep more than the old, who have already slept so much and are preparing to sleep for all eternity.
TERCE
In which Adso, in the scriptorium, reflects on the history of his order and on the destiny of books.
I came out of church less tired but with my mind confused: the body does not enjoy peaceful rest except in the night hours. I went up to the scriptorium and, after obtaining Malachi’s permission, began to leaf through the catalogue. But as I glanced absently at the pages passing before my eyes, I was really observing the monks.
I was struck by their calm, their serenity. Intent on their work, they seemed to forget that one of their brothers was being anxiously sought throughout the grounds, and that two others had disappeared in frightful circumstances. Here, I said to myself, is the greatness of our order: for centuries and centuries men like these have seen the barbarian hordes burst in, sack their abbeys, plunge kingdoms into chasms of fire, and yet they have gone on cherishing parchments and inks, have continued to read, moving their lips over words that have been handed down through centuries and which they will hand down to the centuries to come. They went on reading and copying as the millennium approached; why should they not continue to do so now?
The day before, Benno had said he would be prepared to sin in order to procure a rare book. He was not lying and not joking. A monk should surely love his books with humility, wishing their good and not the glory of his own curiosity; but what the temptation of adultery is for laymen and the yearning for riches is for secular ecclesiastics, the seduction of knowledge is for monks.
I leafed through the catalogue, and a feast of mysterious titles danced before my eyes: Quinti Sereni de medicamentis, Phaenomena, Liber Aesopi de natura animalium, Liber Aethici peronymi de cosmographia, Libei tres quos Arculphus episcopus Adamnano escipiente de locis sanctis ultramarinis designavit conscribendos, Libellus Q. Iulii Hilarionis de origine mundi, Solini Polyhistor de situ orbis terrarum et mirabilibus, Almagesthus. ... I was not surprised that the mystery of the crimes should involve the library. For these men devoted to writing, the library was at once the celestial Jerusalem and an underground world on the border between terra incognita and Hades. They were dominated by the library, by its promises and by its prohibitions. They lived with it, for it, and perhaps against it, sinfully hoping one day to violate all its secrets. Why should they not have risked death to satisfy a curiosity of their minds, or have killed to prevent someone from appropriating a jealously guarded secret of their own?
Temptations, to be sure, intellectual pride. Quite different was the scribe-monk imagined by our sainted founder, capable of copying without understanding, surrendered to the will of God, writing as if praying, and praying inasmuch as he was writing. Why was it no longer so? Oh, this was surely not the only degeneration of our order! It had become too powerful, its abbots competed with kings: in Abo did I not perhaps have the example of a monarch who, with monarch’s demeanor, tried to settle controversies between monarchs? The very knowledge that the abbeys had accumulated was now used as barter goods, cause for pride, motive for boasting and prestige; just as knights displayed armor and standards, our abbots displayed illuminated manuscripts . ... And all the more so now (what madness!), when our monasteries had also lost the leadership in learning: cathedral schools, urban corporations, universities were copying books, perhaps more and better than we, and producing new ones, and this may have been the cause of many misfortunes.
The abbey where I was staying was probably the last to boast of excellence in the production and reproduction of learning. But perhaps for this very reason, the monks were no longer content with the holy work of copying; they wanted also to produce new complements of nature, impelled by the lust for novelty. And they did not realize, as I sensed vaguely at that moment (and know clearly today, now aged in years and experience), that in doing so they sanctioned the destruction of their excellence. Because if this new learning they wanted to produce were to circulate freely outside those walls, then nothing would distinguish that sacred place any longer from a cathedral school or a city university. Remaining isolated, on the other hand, it maintained its prestige and its strength intact, it was not corrupted by disputation, by the quodlibetical conceit that would subject every mystery and every greatness to the scrutiny of the sic et non. There, I said to myself, are the reasons for the silence and the darkness that surround the library: it is the preserve of learning but can maintain this learning unsullied only if it prevents its reaching a
nyone at all, even the monks themselves. Learning is not like a coin, which remains physically whole even through the most infamous transactions; it is, rather, like a very handsome dress, which is worn out through use and ostentation. Is not a book like that, in fact? Its pages crumble, its ink and gold turn dull, if too many hands touch it. I saw Pacificus of Tivoli, leafing through an ancient volume whose pages had become stuck together because of the humidity. He moistened his thumb and forefinger with his tongue to leaf through his book, and at every touch of his saliva those pages lost vigor; opening them meant folding them, exposing them to the harsh action of air and dust, which would erode the subtle wrinkles of the parchment, and would produce mildew where the saliva had softened but also weakened the corner of the page. As an excess of sweetness makes the warrior flaccid and inept, this excess of possessive and curious love would make the book vulnerable to the disease destined to kill it.
What should be done? Stop reading, and only preserve? Were my fears correct? What would my master have said?
Nearby I saw a rubricator, Magnus of Iona, who had finished scraping his vellum with pumice stone and was now softening it with chalk, soon to smooth the surface with the ruler. Another, next to him, Rabano of Toledo, had fixed the parchment to the desk, pricking the margins with tiny holes on both sides, between which, with- a metal stylus, he was now drawing very fine horizontal lines. Soon the two pages would be filled with colors and shapes, the sheet would become a kind of reliquary, glowing with gems studded in what would then be the devout text of the writing. Those two brothers, I said to myself, are living their hours of paradise on earth. They were producing new books, just like those that time would inexorably destroy. ... Therefore, the library could not be threatened by any earthly force, it was a living thing. ... But if it was living, why should it not be opened to the risk of knowledge? Was this what Benno wanted and what Venantius perhaps had wanted?
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