by Umberto Eco
“That is possible. But he is still an inflated wineskin, and he will get himself killed.”
We were in the cloister. The wind was growing angrier all the time, the light dimmer, even if it was just past nones. The day was approaching its sunset, and we had very little time left.
“It is late,” William said, “and when a man has little time, he must take care to maintain his calm. We must act as if we had eternity before us. I have a problem to solve: how to penetrate the finis Africae, because the final answer must be there. Then we must save some person, I have not yet determined which. Finally, we should expect something from the direction of the stables, which you will keep an eye on. . . . Look at all the bustle. . . .”
In fact, the space between the Aedificium and the cloister was unusually animated. A moment before, a novice, coming from the abbot’s house, had run toward the Aedificium. Now Nicholas was coming out of it, heading for the dormitories. In one corner, that morning’s group, Pacificus, Aymaro, and Peter, were deep in discussion with Alinardo, as if trying to convince him of something.
Then they seemed to reach a decision. Aymaro supported the still-reluctant Alinardo, and went with him toward the abbatial residence. They were just entering as Nicholas came out of the dormitory, leading Jorge in the same direction. Seeing the two Italians enter, he whispered something into Jorge’s ear, and the old man shook his head. They continued, however, toward the chapter house.
“The abbot is taking the situation in hand . . .” William murmured skeptically. From the Aedificium were emerging more monks, who belonged in the scriptorium, and they were immediately followed by Benno, who came toward us, more worried than ever.
“There is unrest in the scriptorium,” he told us. “Nobody is working, they are all talking among themselves. . . . What is happening?”
“What’s happening is that the people who until this morning seemed the most suspect are all dead. Until yesterday everyone was on guard against Berengar, foolish and treacherous and lascivious, then the cellarer, a suspect heretic, and finally Malachi, so disliked by everyone. . . . Now they don’t know whom to be on guard against, and they urgently need to find an enemy, or a scapegoat. And each suspects the others; some are afraid, like you; others have decided to frighten someone else. You are all too agitated. Adso, take a look at the stables every now and then. I am going to get some rest.”
I should have been amazed: to go and rest when he had only a few hours left did not seem the wisest decision. But by now I knew my master. The more relaxed his body, the more ebullient his mind.
Between Vespers and Compline
In which long hours of bewilderment are briefly narrated.
It is difficult for me to narrate what happened in the hours that followed, between vespers and compline.
William was absent. I roamed around the stables but noticed nothing abnormal. The grooms were bringing in the animals, made nervous by the wind; otherwise all was calm.
I entered the church. Everyone was already in his place among the stalls, but the abbot noticed Jorge was absent. With a gesture he delayed the beginning of the office. He called for Benno, to dispatch him to look for the old man, but Benno was not there. Someone pointed out that he was probably making the scriptorium ready for its evening closing. The abbot, annoyed, said it had been decided that Benno would close nothing because he did not know the rules. Aymaro of Alessandria rose from his stall: “If Your Paternity agrees, I will go and summon him. . . .”
“No one asked anything of you,” the abbot said curtly, and Aymaro sat back down in his place, not without casting an inscrutable glance at Pacificus of Tivoli. The abbot called for Nicholas, who was not present. Someone reminded him that Nicholas was preparing supper, and the abbot made a gesture of annoyance, as if he were displeased to reveal to all that he was upset.
“I want Jorge here,” he cried. “Find him! You go!” he ordered the master of novices.
Another pointed out to him that Alinardo was also missing. “I know,” the abbot said, “he is not well.” I was near Peter of Sant’Albano and heard him say to his neighbor, Gunzo of Nola, in a vulgar dialect from central Italy which I partly understood, “I should think so. Today, when he came out after the colloquy, the poor old man was distraught. Abo behaves like the whore of Avignon!”
The novices were bewildered; with their innocent, boyish sensitivity they felt the tension reigning in choir, as I felt it. Long moments of silence and embarrassment ensued. The abbot ordered some psalms to be recited and he picked at random three that were not prescribed for vespers by the Rule. All looked at one another, then began praying in low voices. The novice master came back, followed by Benno, who took his seat, his head bowed. Jorge was not in the scriptorium or in his cell. The abbot commanded that the office begin.
When it was over, before everyone headed for supper, I went to call William. He was stretched out on his pallet, dressed, motionless. He said he had not realized it was so late. I told him briefly what had happened. He shook his head.
At the door of the refectory we saw Nicholas, who a few hours earlier had been accompanying Jorge. William asked him whether the old man had gone in immediately to see the abbot. Nicholas said Jorge had had to wait a long time outside the door, because Alinardo and Aymaro of Alessandria were in the hall. After Jorge was received, he remained inside for some time, while Nicholas waited for him. Then he came out and asked Nicholas to accompany him to the church, still deserted an hour before vespers.
The abbot saw us talking with the cellarer. “Brother William,” he admonished, “are you still investigating?” He bade William sit at his table, as usual. For Benedictines hospitality is sacred.
The supper was more silent than usual, and sad. The abbot ate listlessly, oppressed by grim thoughts. At the end he told the monks to hurry to compline.
Alinardo and Jorge were still absent. The monks pointed to the blind man’s empty place and whispered. When the office was finished, the abbot asked all to say a special prayer for the health of Jorge of Burgos. It was not clear whether he meant physical health or eternal health. All understood that a new calamity was about to befall the community. Then the abbot ordered each monk to hurry, with greater alacrity than usual, to his own pallet. He commanded that no one, and he emphasized the words “no one,” should remain in circulation outside the dormitory. The frightened novices were the first to leave, cowls over their faces, heads bowed, without exchanging the remarks, the nudges, the flashing smiles, the sly and concealed trippings with which they usually provoked one another (for a novice is still a child, and the reproaches of his master are of little avail in preventing him from behaving like a child, as his tender age demands).
When the adults filed out, I fell into line, unobtrusively, behind the group that by now had been characterized to me as “the Italians.” Pacificus was murmuring to Aymaro, “Do you really believe Abo doesn’t know where Jorge is?” And Aymaro answered, “He might know, and know that from where Jorge is he will never return. Perhaps the old man wanted too much, and Abo no longer wants him. . . .”
As William and I pretended to retire to the pilgrims’ hospice, we glimpsed the abbot re-entering the Aedificium through the still-open door of the refectory. William advised waiting a while; once the grounds were empty of every presence, he told me to follow him. We rapidly crossed the empty area and entered the church.
After Compline
In which, almost by chance, William discovers the secret of entering the finis Africae.
Like a pair of assassins, we lurked near the entrance, behind a column, whence we could observe the chapel with the skulls.
“Abo has gone to close the Aedificium,” William said. “When he has barred the doors from the inside, he can only come out through the ossarium.”
“And then?”
“And then we will see what he does.”
We did not discover what he did. An hour went by and he still had not reappeared. He’s gone into the finis Africa
e, I said. Perhaps, William answered. Eager to formulate more hypotheses, I added: Perhaps he came out again through the refectory and has gone to look for Jorge. And William answered: That is also possible. Perhaps Jorge is already dead, I imagined further. Perhaps he is in the Aedificium and is killing the abbot. Perhaps they are both in some other place and some other person is lying in wait for them. What did “the Italians” want? And why was Benno so frightened? Was it perhaps only a mask he had assumed, to mislead us? Why had he lingered in the scriptorium during vespers, if he didn’t know how to close the scriptorium or how to get out? Did he want to essay the passages of the labyrinth?
“All is possible,” William said. “But only one thing is happening, or has happened, or is about to happen. And at last divine Providence is offering us a radiant certitude.”
“What is that?” I asked, full of hope.
“That Brother William of Baskerville, who now has the impression of having understood everything, does not know how to enter the finis Africae. To the stables, Adso, to the stables.”
“And what if the abbot finds us?”
“We will pretend to be a pair of ghosts.”
To me this did not seem a practical solution, but I kept silent. William was growing uneasy. We came out of the north door and crossed the cemetery, while the wind was whistling loudly and I begged the Lord not to make us encounter two ghosts, for the abbey, on that night, did not lack for souls in torment. We reached the stables and heard the horses, more nervous than ever because of the fury of the elements. The main door of the building had, at the level of a man’s chest, a broad metal grating, through which the interior could be seen. In the darkness we discerned the forms of the horses. I recognized Brunellus, the first on the left. To his right, the third animal in line raised his head, sensing our presence, and whinnied. I smiled. “Tertius equi,” I said.
“What?” William asked.
“Nothing. I was remembering poor Salvatore. He wanted to perform God knows what magic with that horse, and with his Latin he called him ‘tertius equi.’ Which would be the u.”
“The u?” asked William, who had heard my prattle without paying much attention to it.
“Yes, because in good Latin ‘tertius equi’ doesn’t mean the third horse, but the third of the horse, or the third letter of the word ‘equus,’ which is therefore the u. But this is all nonsense. . . .”
William looked at me, and in the darkness I seemed to see his face transformed. “God bless you, Adso!” he said to me. “Why, of course, suppositio materialis, the discourse is presumed de dicto and not de re. . . . What a fool I am!” He gave himself such a great blow on the forehead that I heard a clap, and I believe he hurt himself. “My boy, this is the second time today that wisdom has spoken through your mouth, first in dream and now waking! Run, run to your cell and fetch the lamp, or, rather, both the lamps we hid. Let no one see you, and join me in church at once! Ask no questions! Go!”
I asked no questions and went. The lamps were under my bed, already filled with oil, and I had taken care to trim them in advance. I had the flint in my habit. With the two precious instruments clutched to my chest, I ran into the church.
William was under the tripod and was rereading the parchment with Venantius’s notes.
“Adso,” he said to me, “‘primum et septimum de quatuor’ does not mean the first and seventh of four, but of the four, the word ‘four’!” For a moment I still did not understand, but then I was enlightened: “Super thronos viginti quatuor! The writing! The verse! The words are carved over the mirror!”
“Come,” William said, “perhaps we are still in time to save a life!”
“Whose?” I asked, as he was manipulating the skulls and opening the passage to the ossarium.
“The life of someone who does not deserve it,” he said. We were already in the underground passage, our lamps alight, moving toward the door that led to the kitchen.
I said before that at this point you pushed a wooden door and found yourself in the kitchen, behind the fireplace, at the foot of the circular staircase that led to the scriptorium. And just as we were pushing that door, we heard to our left some muffled sounds within the wall. They came from the wall beside the door, where the row of niches with skulls and bones ended. Instead of a last niche, there was a stretch of blank wall of large squared blocks of stone, with an old plaque in the center that had some worn monograms carved on it. The sounds came, it seemed, from behind the plaque, or else from above the plaque, partly beyond the wall, and partly almost over our heads.
If something of the sort had happened the first night, I would immediately have thought of dead monks. But by now I tended to expect worse from living monks. “Who can that be?” I asked.
William opened the door and emerged behind the fireplace. The blows were heard also along the wall that flanked the stairs, as if someone were prisoner inside the wall, or else in that thickness (truly vast) that presumably existed between the inner wall of the kitchen and the outer wall of the south tower.
“Someone is shut up inside there,” William said. “I have wondered all along whether there were not another access to the finis Africae, in this Aedificium so full of passages. Obviously there is. From the ossarium, before you come up into the kitchen, a stretch of wall opens, and you climb up a staircase parallel to this, concealed in the wall, which leads right to the blind room.”
“But who is in there?”
“The second person. One is in the finis Africae, another has tried to reach him, but the one above must have blocked the mechanism that controls the entrances. So the visitor is trapped. And he is making a great stir because, I imagine, there cannot be much air in that narrow space.”
“Who is it? We must save him!”
“We shall soon know who it is. And as for saving him, that can only be done by releasing the mechanism from above: we don’t know the secret at this end. Let’s hurry upstairs.”
So we went up to the scriptorium, and from there to the labyrinth, and we quickly reached the south tower. Twice I had to curb my haste, because the wind that came through the slits that night created currents that, penetrating those passages, blew moaning through the rooms, rustling the scattered pages on the desks, so that I had to shield the flame with my hand.
Soon we were in the mirror room, this time prepared for the game of distortion awaiting us. We raised the lamps to illuminate the verse that surmounted the frame. Super thronos viginti quatuor . . . At this point the secret was quite clear: the word “quatuor” has seven letters, and we had to press on the q and the r. I thought, in my excitement, to do it myself: I rapidly set the lamp down on the table in the center of the room. But I did this nervously, and the flame began to lick the binding of a book also set there.
“Watch out, idiot!” William cried, and with a puff blew out the flame. “You want to set fire to the library?”
I apologized and started to light the lamp again. “It doesn’t matter,” William said, “mine is enough. Take it and give me light, because the legend is too high and you couldn’t reach it. We must hurry.”
“And what if there is somebody armed in there?” I asked, as William, almost groping, sought the fatal letters, standing on tiptoe, tall as he was, to touch the apocalyptic verse.
“Give me light, by the Devil, and never fear: God is with us!” he answered me, somewhat incoherently. His fingers were touching the q of “quatuor,” and, standing a few paces back, I saw better than he what he was doing. I have already said that the letters of the verses seemed carved or incised in the wall: apparently those of the word “quatuor” were metal outlines, behind which a wondrous mechanism had been placed and walled up. When it was pushed forward, the q made a kind of sharp click, and the same thing happened when William pressed on the r. The whole frame of the mirror seemed to shudder, and the glass surface snapped back. The mirror was a door, hinged on its left side. William slipped his hand into the opening now created between the right edge and the wall,
and pulled toward himself. Creaking, the door opened out, in our direction. William slipped through the opening and I scuttled behind him, the lamp high over my head.
Two hours after compline, at the end of the sixth day, in the heart of the night that was giving birth to the seventh day, we entered the finis Africae.
SEVENTH DAY
Night
In which, if it were to summarize the prodigious revelations of which it speaks, the title would have to be as long as the chapter itself, contrary to usage.
We found ourselves on the threshold of a room similar in shape to the other three heptagonal blind rooms, dominated by a strong musty odor, as of mildewed books. The lamp, which I held up high, first illuminated the vault; then, as I moved my arm downward, to right and left, the flame cast a vague light on the distant shelves along the walls. Finally, in the center, we saw a table covered with papers, and behind the table a seated figure, who seemed to be waiting for us in the darkness, immobile, if he was still alive. Even before the light revealed his face, William spoke.
“Happy night, venerable Jorge,” he said. “Were you waiting for us?”
The lamp now illuminated the face of the old man, looking at us as if he could see.
