So we took a long turn around the Aedificium. That is, from the distance we examined the east, south, and west towers, with the walls connecting them. The rest rose over the cliff, though for reasons of symmetry it could not be very different from what we were seeing.
And what we saw, William observed as he made me take precise notes on my tablet, was that each wall had two windows, and each tower five.
“Now, think,” my master said to me. “Each room we saw had a window. ...”
“Except those with seven sides,” I said.
“And, naturally, they are the ones in the center of each tower.”
“And except some others that we found without windows but that were not heptagonal.”
“Forget them. First let us find the rule, then we will try to explain the exceptions. So: we will have on the outside five rooms for each tower and two rooms for each straight wall, each room with a window. But if from a room with a window we proceed toward the interior of the Aedificium, we meet another room with a window. A sign that there are internal windows. Now, what shape is the internal well, as seen from the kitchen and from the scriptorium?”
“Octagonal,” I said.
“Excellent. And on each side of the octagon, there could easily be two windows. Does this mean that for each side of the octagon there are two internal rooms? Am I right?”
“Yes, but what about the windowless rooms?”
“There are eight in all. In fact, the internal room of every tower, with seven sides, has five walls that open each into one of the five rooms of the tower. What do the other two walls confine with? Not with rooms set along the outside walls, or there would be windows, and not with rooms along the octagon, for the same reason and because they would then be excessively long rooms. Try to draw a plan of how the library might look from above. You see that in each tower there must be two rooms that confine with the heptagonal room and open into two rooms that confine with the internal octagonal well.”
I tried drawing the plan that my master suggested, and I let out a cry of triumph. “But now we know everything! Let me count. ... The library has fifty-six rooms, four of them heptagonal and fifty-two more or less square, and of these, there are eight without windows, while twenty-eight look to the outside and sixteen to the interior!”
“And the four towers each have five rooms with four walls and one with seven. ... The library is constructed according to a celestial harmony to which various and wonderful meanings can be attributed. ...”
“A splendid discovery” I said, “but why is it so difficult to get our bearings?”
“Because what does not correspond to any mathematical law is the arrangement of the openings. Some rooms allow you to pass into several others, some into only one, and we must ask ourselves whether there are not rooms that do not allow you to go anywhere else. If you consider this aspect, plus the lack of light or of any clue that might be supplied by the position of the sun (and if you add the visions and the mirrors), you understand how the labyrinth can confuse anyone who goes through it, especially when he is already troubled by a sense of guilt. Remember, too, how desperate we were last night when we could no longer find our way. The maximum of confusion achieved with the maximum of order: it seems a sublime calculation. The builders of the library were great masters.”
“How will we orient ourselves, then?”
“At this point it isn’t difficult. With the map you’ve drawn, which should more or less correspond to the plan of the library, as soon as we are m the first heptagonal room we will move immediately to reach one of the blind rooms. Then, always turning right, after two or three rooms we should again be in a tower, which can only be the north tower, until we come to another blind room, on the left, which will confine with the heptagonal room, and on the right will allow us to rediscover a route similar to what I have just described, until we arrive at the west tower.”
“Yes, if all the rooms opened into all the other rooms …”
“In fact. And for this reason well need your map, to mark the blank walls on it, so we’ll know what detours were making. But it won’t be difficult.”
“But are we sure it will work?” I asked, puzzled; it all seemed too simple to me.
It will work, William replied. “But unfortunately we don’t know everything yet. We have learned how to avoid being lost. Now we must know whether there is a rule governing the distribution of the books among the rooms. And the verses from the Apocalypse tell us very little, not least because many are repeated identically in different rooms. …”
“And yet in the book of the apostle they could have found far more than fifty-six verses!”
“Undoubtedly. Therefore only certain verses are good. Strange. As if they had had fewer than fifty: thirty or twenty ... Oh, by the beard of Merlin!”
“Of whom?”
“Pay no attention. A magician of my country ... They used as many verses as there are letters in the alphabet! Of course, that’s it! The text of the verse doesn’t count, it’s the initial letters that count. Each room is marked by a letter of the alphabet, and all together they make up some text that we must discover!”
“Like a figured poem, in the form of a cross or a fish!”
“More or less, and probably in the period when the library was built, that kind of poem was much in vogue.”
“But where does the text begin?”
“With a scroll larger than the others, in the heptagonal room of the entrance tower ... or else ... Why, of course, with the sentences in red!”
“But there are so many of them!”
“And therefore there must be many texts, or many words. Now make a better and larger copy of your map; while we visit the library, you will mark down with your stylus the rooms we pass through, the positions of the doors and walls (as well as the windows), and also the first letters of the verses that appear there. And like a good illuminator, you will make the letters in red larger.”
“But how does it happen,” I said with admiration, “that you were able to solve the mystery of the library looking at it from the outside, and you were unable to solve it when you were inside?”
“Thus God knows the world, because He conceived it in His mind, as if from the outside, before it was created, and we do not know its rule, because we live inside it, having found it already made.”
“So one can know things by looking at them from the outside!”
“The creations of art, because we retrace in our minds the operations of the artificer. Not the creations of nature, because they are not the work of our minds.”
“But for the library this suffices, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” William said. “But only for the library. Now let’s go and rest. I can do nothing until tomorrow morning, when I will have, I hope, my lenses. We might as well sleep, and rise early. I will try to reflect.”
“And supper?”
“Ah, of course, supper. The hour has passed by now. The monks are already at compline. But perhaps the kitchen is still open. Go look for something.”
“And steal it?”
“Ask. Ask Salvatore, who is now your friend.”
“But he will steal!”
“Are you perhaps your brother’s keeper?” William asked, with the words of Cain. But I saw he was joking and meant to say that God is great and merciful. And so I went looking for Salvatore and found him near the horses’ stalls.
“A fine animal,” I said, nodding at Brunellus, as a way of starting a conversation. “I would like to ride him.”
“No se puede. Abbonis est. But you do not need a pulcher horse to ride hard. …” He pointed out a sturdy but ill-favored horse. “That one also suficit. … Vide illuc, tertius equi. ...”
He wanted to point out to me the third horse. I laughed at his comical Latin. “And what will you do with that one?” I asked him.
And he told me a strange story. He said that any horse, even the oldest and weakest animal, could be made as swift as Brunellus. You had
only to mix into his oats an herb called satirion, chopped fine, and then grease. his thighs with stag fat. Then you mount the horse, and before spurring him you turn his face eastward and you whisper into his ear, three times, the words: “Nicander, Melchior, and Merchizard,” And the horse will dash off and will go as far in one hour as Brunellus would in eight. And if you hang around his neck the teeth of a wolf that the horse himself has trampled and killed, the animal will not even feel the effort.
I asked him whether he had ever tried this. He said to me, coming closer circumspectly and whispering into my ear with his really foul breath, that it was very difficult, because satirion was now cultivated only by bishops and by their lordly friends, who used it to increase their power. Then I put an end to his talk and told him that this evening my master wanted’ to read certain books in his cell and wished to eat up there.
“I will do,” he said, “I will do cheese in batter.”
“How is that made?”
“Facilis. You take the cheese before it is too antiquum, without too much salis, and cut in cubes or sicut you like. And postea you put a bit of butierro or lardo to rechauffer over the embers. And in it you put two pieces of cheese, and when it becomes tenero, zucharum et cinnamon supra positurum du bis. And immediately take to table, because it must be ate caldo caldo.”
“Cheese in batter it is, then,” I said to him. And he vanished toward the kitchen, telling me to wait for him. He arrived half an hour later with a dish covered by a cloth. The aroma was good.
“Here,” he said to me, and he also held out a great lamp filled with oil.
“What for?” I asked.
“Sais pas, moi,” he said, slyly. “Peut-être your magister wants to go in dark place esta noche.”
Salvatore apparently knew more things than I had suspected. I inquired no further, but took the food to William. We ate, and I withdrew to my cell. Or at least, so I implied. I wanted to find Ubertino again, and stealthily I returned to the church.
AFTER COMPLINE
In which Ubertino tells Adso the story of Fra Dolcino, after which Adso recalls other stories or reads them on his own in the library, and then he has an encounter with a maiden, beautiful and terrible as an army arrayed for battle.
I found Ubertino at the statue of the Virgin. Silently I joined him and for a while pretended (I confess) to pray. Then I made bold to speak to him.
“Holy Father,” I said to him, “may I ask enlightenment and counsel of you?”
Ubertino looked at me and, taking me by the hand, rose and led me to a bench, where we both sat. He embraced me tightly, and I could feel his breath on my face.
“Dearest son,” he said, “anything this poor sinner can do for your soul will be done joyfully. What is distressing you? Yearnings?” he asked, almost with yearning himself. “The yearnings of the flesh?”
“No,” I replied, blushing, “if anything the yearnings of the mind, which wants to know too many things ...”
“And that is bad. The Lord knows all things, and we must only adore His knowledge.”
“But we must also distinguish good from evil and understand human passions. I am a novice, but I will be monk and priest, and I must learn where evil lies, and what it looks like, in order to recognize it one day and teach others to recognize it.”
“This is true, my boy. What do you want to know, then?”
“The tare of heresy, Father,” I said with conviction. And then, all in one breath, “I have heard tell of a wicked man who has led others astray: Fra Dolcino.”
Ubertino remained silent, then he said: “That is right, you heard Brother William and me refer to him the other evening. But it is a nasty story, and it grieves me to talk about it, because it teaches (yes, in this sense you should know it, to derive a useful lesson from it)—because, I was saying, it teaches how the love of penance and the desire to purify the world can produce bloodshed and slaughter.” He shifted his position on the bench, relaxing his grasp of my shoulders but still keeping one hand on my neck, as if to communicate to me his knowledge or (I could not tell) his intensity.
“The story begins before Fra Dolcino,” he said, “more than sixty years ago, when I was a child. It was in Parma. There a certain Gherardo Segarelli began preaching, exhorting all to a life of penitence, and he would go along the roads crying ‘Penitenziagite!’ which was the uneducated man’s way of saying ‘Penitentiam agite, appropinquabit enim regnum coelorum.’ He enjoined his disciples to imitate the apostles, and he chose to call his sect the order of the Apostles, and his men were to go through the world like poor beggars, living only on alms. ...”
“Like the Fraticelli,” I said. “Wasn’t this the command of our Lord and of your own Francis?”
“Yes,” Ubertino admitted with a slight hesitation in his voice, sighing. “But perhaps Gherardo exaggerated. He and his followers were accused of denying the authority of the priests and the celebration of Mass and confession, and of being idle vagabonds.”
“But the Spiritual Franciscans were accused of the same thing. And aren’t the Minorites saying today that the authority of the Pope should not be recognized?”
“Yes, but not the authority of priests. We Minorites are ourselves priests. It is difficult, boy, to make distinctions in these things. The line dividing good from evil is so fine. ... In some way Gherardo erred and became guilty of heresy. ... He asked to be admitted to the order of the Minorites, but our brothers would not receive him. He spent his days in the church of our brothers, and he saw the paintings there of the apostles wearing sandals on their feet and cloaks wrapped around their shoulders, and so he let his hair and beard grow, put sandals on his feet, and wore the rope of the Friars Minor, because anyone who wants to found a new congregation always takes something from the order of the Blessed Francis.”
“Then he was in the right. ...”
“But somewhere he did wrong. ... Dressed in a white cloak over a white tunic, with his hair long, he acquired among simple people the reputation for saintliness. He sold a little house of his, and having received the money, he stood on a stone from which in ancient times the magistrates were accustomed to harangue, and he held the little sack of gold pieces in his hand, and he did not scatter them or give them to the poor, but, after summoning some rogues dicing nearby, he flung the money in their midst and said, ‘Let him take who will,’ and those rogues took the money and went off to gamble it away, and they blasphemed the living God, and he who had given to them heard and did not blush.”
“But Francis also stripped himself of everything, and today from William I heard that he went to preach to ravens and hawks, as well as to the lepers—namely, to the dregs that the people who call themselves virtuous had cast out. ...”
“Yes, but Gherardo somehow erred; Francis never set himself in conflict with the holy church, and the Gospel says to give to the poor, not to rogues. Gherardo gave and received nothing in return because he had given to bad people, and he had a bad beginning, a bad continuation, and a bad end, because his congregation was disapproved by Pope Gregory the Tenth.
“Perhaps,” I said, “he was a less broad-minded pope than the one who approved the Rule of Francis. …”
“He was, but Gherardo somehow erred, and Francis, on the contrary, knew well what he was doing. And finally, boy, these keepers of pigs and cows who suddenly became Pseudo Apostles wanted to live blissfully and without sweat off the alms of those whom the Friars Minor had educated with such efforts and such heroic examples of poverty! But that is not the point,” he added promptly. “The point is that to resemble the apostles, who had still been Jews, Gherardo Segarelli had himself circumcised, which is contrary to the words of Paul to the Galatians—and you know that many holy persons proclaim that the future Antichrist will come from the race of the circumcised. ... But Gherardo did still worse: he went about collecting the simple people and saying, ‘Come with me into the vineyard,’ and those who did not know him went with him into another’s vineyard, believing it
his, and they ate another’s grapes. ...”
“Surely the Minorites didn’t defend private property,” I said impertinently.
Ubertino stared at me severely. “The Minorites ask to be poor, but they have never asked others to be poor. You cannot attack the property of good Christians with impunity; the good Christians will label you a bandit. And so it happened to Gherardo. They said of him finally that to test his strength of will and his continence he slept with women without having carnal knowledge of them; but when his disciples tried to imitate him, the results were quite different. ... Oh, these are not things a boy should know: the female is a vessel of the Devil. ... And then they began to brawl among themselves over the command of the sect, and evil things happened. And yet many came to Gherardo, not only peasants, but also people of the city, members of the guilds, and Gherardo made them strip themselves so that, naked, they could follow the naked Christ, and he sent them out into the world to preach, but he had a sleeveless tunic made for himself, white, of strong stuff, and in this garb he looked more like a clown than like a religious! They lived in the open air, but sometimes they climbed into the pulpits of the churches, disturbing the assembly of devout folk and driving out their preachers, and once they set a child on the bishop’s throne in the Church of Sant’Orso in Ravenna. And they proclaimed themselves heirs of the doctrine of Joachim of Floris. ...”
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