The source of the phrases on the scrolls was obvious — they were verses from the Apocalypse of John — but it was not at all clear why they were painted on the walls or what logic was behind their arrangement. To increase our confusion, we discovered that some scrolls, not many, were colored red instead of black.
At a certain point we found ourselves again in the original heptagonal room (easily identified because the stairwell began there), and we resumed moving toward our right, trying to go straight from room to room. We went through three rooms and then found ourselves facing a blank wall. The only opening led into a new room that had only one other aperture, which we went through, and then, after another four rooms, we found ourselves again facing a wall. We returned to the previous room, which had two exits, took the one we had not tried before, went into a new room, and then found ourselves back in the heptagonal room of the outset.
“What was the name of the last room, the one where we began retracing our steps?” William asked.
I strained my memory and, I had a vision of a white horse: “Equus albus.”
“Good. Let’s find it again.” And it was easy. From there, if we did not want to turn back as we had before, we could only pass through the room called “Gratia vobis et pax,” and from there, on the right, we thought we found a new passage, which did not take us back. Actually we again came upon “In diebus illis” and “Primogenitus mortuorum” (were they the rooms of a few moments earlier?); then finally we came to a room that we did not seem to have visited before: “Tertia pars terrae combusta est.” But even when we had learned that a third of the earth had been burned up, we still did not know what our position was with respect to the east tower.
Holding the lamp in front of me, I ventured into the next rooms. A giant of threatening dimensions, a swaying and fluttering form came toward me, like a ghost.
“A devil!” I cried and almost dropped the lamp as I wheeled around and took refuge in William’s arms. He seized the lamp from my hands and, thrusting me aside, stepped forward with a decisiveness that to me seemed sublime. He also saw something, because he brusquely stepped back. Then he leaned forward again and raised the lamp. He burst out laughing.
“Really ingenious. A mirror!”
“A mirror?”
“Yes, my bold warrior. You flung yourself so courageously on a real enemy a short while ago in the scriptorium, and now you are frightened by your own image. A mirror that reflects your image, enlarged and distorted.”
He took me by the hand and led me up to the wall facing the entrance to the room. On a corrugated sheet of glass, now that the light illuminated it more closely, I saw our two images, grotesquely misshapen, changing form and height as we moved closer or stepped back.
“You must read some treatise on optics,” William said, amused, “as the creators of the library surely did. The best ones are by the Arabs. Alhazen wrote a treatise, De aspectibus, in which, with precise geometrical demonstrations, he spoke of the power of mirrors, some of which, depending on how their surface is gauged, can enlarge the tiniest things (what else are my lenses?), while others make images appear upside down, or oblique, or show two objects in the place of one, and four in place of two. Still others, like this one, turn a dwarf into a giant or a giant into a dwarf.”
“Lord Jesus!” I exclaimed. “Are these, then, the visions some say they have had in the library?”
“Perhaps. A really clever idea.” He read the scroll on the wall, over the mirror: “Super thronos viginti quatuor.” “ ‘The twenty-four elders upon their seats.’ We have seen this inscription before, but it was a room without any mirror. This one, moreover, has no windows, and yet it is not heptagonal. Where are we?” He looked around and went over to a case. “Adso, without those wondrous oculi ad legendum I cannot figure out what is written on these books. Read me some titles.”
I picked out a book at random. “Master, it is not written!”
“What do you mean? I can see it is written. What do you read?”
“I am not reading. These are not letters of the alphabet, and it is not Greek. I would recognize it. They look like worms, snakes, fly dung…”
“Ah, it’s Arabic. Are there others like it?”
“Yes, several. But here is one in Latin, thank God. Al … Al-Kuwarizmi, Tabulae.”
“The astronomical tables of Al-Kuwarizmi, translated by Adelard of Bath! A very rare work! Continue.”
“Isa ibn-Ali, De oculis; Alkindi, De radiis slellatis …”
“Now look on the table.”
I opened a great volume lying on the table, a De bestiis. I happened on a delicately illuminated page where a very beautiful unicorn was depicted.
“Beautifully made,” William commented, able to see the illustrations well. “And that?”
I read: “Liter monstrorum de diversis generibus. This also has beautiful images, but they seem older to me.”
William bent his face to the text. “Illuminated by Irish monks, at least five centuries ago. The unicorn book, on the other hand, is much more recent; it seems to me made in the French fashion.” Once again I admired my master’s erudition. We entered the next room and crossed the four rooms after it, all with windows, and all filled with volumes in unknown languages, in addition to some texts of occult sciences. Then we came to a wall, which forced us to turn back, because the last five rooms opened one into the other, with no other egress possible.
“To judge by the angles of the walls, I would say we are in the pentagon of another tower,” William said, “but there is no central heptagonal room. Perhaps we are mistaken.”
“But what about the windows?” I asked. “How can there be so many windows? It is impossible for all the rooms to overlook the outside.”
“You’re forgetting the central well. Many of the windows we have seen overlook the octagon, the well. If it were day, the difference in light would tell us which are external windows and which internal, and perhaps would even reveal to us a room’s position with respect to the sun. But after dusk no difference is perceptible. Let’s go back.”
We returned to the room with the mirror and headed for the third doorway, which we thought we had not gone through previously. We saw before us a sequence of three or four rooms, and toward the last we noticed a glow.
“Someone’s there!” I exclaimed in a stifled voice.
“If so, he has already seen our light,” William said, nevertheless shielding the flame with his hand. We hesitated a moment or two. The glow continued to flicker slightly, but without growing stronger or weaker.
“Perhaps it is only a lamp,” William said, “set here to convince the monks that the library is inhabited by the souls of the dead. But we must find out. You stay here, and keep covering the light. I’ll go ahead cautiously.”
Still ashamed at the sorry figure I had cut before the mirror, I wanted to redeem myself in William’s eyes. “No, I’ll go,” I said. “You stay here. I’ll proceed cautiously. I am smaller and lighter. As soon as I’ve made sure there is no risk, I’ll call you.”
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.