The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana

475 Pages·2006·21.98 MB·English

by  Umberto Eco

THE MYSTERIOUS FLAME OF QUEEN LOANA

ALSO BY UMBERTO ECO

Baudolino

The Island of the Day Before

Foucault's Pendulum

The Name of the Rose

Postscript to the Name of the Rose

On Literature

Five Moral Pieces

Kant and the Platypus

Serendipities

How to Travel with a Salmon

Misreadings

Travels in Hyperreality

Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language

A Theory of Semiotics

The Open Work

UMBERTO ECO

THE MYSTERIOUS FLAME OF QUEEN LOANA

AN ILLUSTRATED NOVEL

Translated from the Italian by Geoffrey Brock

HARCOURT, INC.

Orlando Austin New York San Diego Toronto London

© 2004 RCS Libri S.p.A.
English translation copyright © 2005 by Geoffrey Brock

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be
mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc.,
6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

www.HarcourtBooks.com

This is a translation of La Misteriosa Fiamma della Regina Loana

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Eco, Umberto.
[Misteriosa fiamma della Regina Loana. English]
The mysterious flame of Queen Loana: an illustrated novel/Umberto Eco;
translated from the Italian by Geoffrey Brock.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
I. Brock, Geoffrey, 1964- II. Title.
PQ4865.C6M5713 2005
853'.912—dc22 2004029105
ISBN-13: 978-0-15-101140-7
ISBN-10: 0-15-101140-0

Text set in Sabon and Interstate
Designed by Deibra McQuiston

Printed in the United States of America

First edition

K J I H G F E D C B A

CONTENTS
__________________________________________________________________________________

PART ONE: THE INCIDENT

1. The Cruelest Month

3

2. The Murmur of Mulberry Leaves

28

3. Someone May Pluck Your Flower

45

4. Alone through City Streets I Go

64

PART TWO: PAPER MEMORY

5. Clarabelle's Treasure

81

6. II Nuovissimo Melzi

90

7. Eight Days in an Attic

117

8. When the Radio

159

9. But Pippo Doesn't Know

178

10.The Alchemist's Tower

212

11.Up There at Capocabana

227

12.Blue Skies Are on the Way

257

13.The Pallid Little Maiden

272

14.The Hotel of the Three Roses

295

PART THREE: OI NOZTOI

15.You're Back at Last, Friend Mist!

301

16.The Wind Is Whistling

325

17.The Provident Young Man

379

18.Lovely Thou Art as the Sun

406

SOURCES OF CITATIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

451

1

Part One
_______________

THE INCIDENT

3

1. The Cruelest Month
______________________

"And what’s your name?"
"Wait, it’s on the tip of my tongue."

That is how it all began.
I felt as if I had awoke from a long sleep, and yet I was still

suspended in a milky gray. Or else I was not awake, but dreaming. It
was a strange dream, void of images, crowded with sounds. As if I could
not see, but could hear voices that were telling me what I should have
been seeing. And they were telling me that I could not see anything yet,
only a haziness along the canals where the landscape dissolved. Bruges,
I said to myself, I was in Bruges. Had I ever been to Bruges the Dead?
Where fog hovers between the towers like incense dreaming? A gray
city, sad as a tombstone with chrysanthemums, where mist hangs over
the façades like tapestries . . .

My soul was wiping the streetcar windows so it could drown in the

moving fog of the headlamps. Fog, my uncontaminated sister . . . A
thick, opaque fog, which enveloped the noises and called up shapeless
phantoms . . . Finally I came to a vast chasm and could see a colossal
figure, wrapped in a shroud, its face the immaculate whiteness of snow.
My name is Arthur Gordon Pym.

4

I was chewing fog. Phantoms were passing, brushing me, melting.

Distant bulbs glimmered like will-o’-the-wisps in a graveyard . . .

Someone is walking by my side, noiselessly, as if in bare feet,

walking without heels, without shoes, without sandals. A patch of fog
grazes my cheek, a band of drunks is shouting down there, down by the
ferry. The ferry? It is not me talking, it is the voices.

The fog comes on little cat feet . . . There was a fog that seemed to

have taken the world away.

Yet every so often it was as if I had opened my eyes and were

seeing flashes. I could hear voices: "Strictly speaking, Signora, it isn’t a
coma. . . . No, don’t think about flat encephalograms, for heaven’s sake.
. . . There’s reactivity. . . ."

Someone was aiming a light into my eyes, but after the light it was

dark again. I could feel the puncture of a needle, somewhere. "You see,
there’s withdrawal . . ."

Maigret plunges into a fog so dense that he can’t even see where

he’s stepping. . . . The fog teems with human shapes, swarms with an
intense, mysterious life. Maigret? Elementary, my dear Watson, there are
ten little Indians, and the hound of the Baskervilles vanishes into the
fog.

The gray vapor was gradually losing its grayness of tint, the heat of

the water was extreme, and its milky hue was more evident than ever . .
. And now we rushed into the embraces of the cataract, where a chasm
threw itself open to receive us.

I heard people talking around me, wanted to shout to let them

know I was there. There was a continuous drone, as though I were
being devoured by celibate machines with whetted teeth. I was in the
penal colony. I felt a weight on my head, as if they had slipped the iron
mask onto my face. I thought I saw sky blue lights.

"There’s asymmetry of the pupillary diameters."
I had fragments of thoughts, clearly I was waking up, but I could

not move. If only I could stay awake. Was I sleeping again? Hours,
days, centuries?

5

The fog was back, the voices in the fog, the voices about the fog.

Seltsam, im Nebel zu wandern! What language is that? I seemed to be
swimming in the sea, I felt I was near the beach but was unable to
reach it. No one saw me, and the tide was carrying me away again.

Please tell me something, please touch me. I felt a hand on my

forehead. Such relief. Another voice: "Signora, there are cases of
patients who suddenly wake up and walk away under their own
power."

Someone was disturbing me with an intermittent light, with the

hum of a tuning fork. It was as if they had put a jar of mustard under
my nose, then a clove of garlic. The earth has the odor of mushrooms.

Other voices, but these from within: long laments of the steam

engine, priests shapeless in the fog walking single file toward San
Michele in Bosco.

The sky is made of ash. Fog up the river, fog down the river, fog

biting the hands of the little match girl. Chance people on the bridges to
the Isle of Dogs look into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them,
as if they were up in a balloon and hanging under the brown fog . . . I
had not thought death had undone so many. The odor of train station
and soot.

Another light, softer. I seem to hear, through the fog, the sound of

bagpipes starting up again on the heath.

Another long sleep, perhaps. Then a clearing, like being in a glass

of water and anisette . . .

He was right in front of me, though I still saw him as a shadow.

My head felt muddled, as if I were waking up after having drunk too
much. I think I managed to murmur something weakly, as if I were in
that moment beginning to talk for the first time: "Posco reposco
flagito—do they take the future infinitive? Cujus regio ejus religio . . . is
that the Peace of Augsburg or the Defenestration of Prague?" And then:
"Fog too on the Apennine stretch of the

6

Autosole Highway, between Roncobilaccio and Barberino del Mugello .
. ."

He smiled sympathetically. "But now open your eyes all the way

and try to look around. Do you know where we are?" Now I could see
him better. He was wearing a white—what is it called?—coat. I looked
around and was even able to move my head: the room was sober and
clean, a few small pieces of pale metal furniture, and I was in bed, with
a tube stuck in my arm. From the window, through the lowered blinds,
came a blade of sunlight, spring on all sides shines in the air, and in the
fields rejoices. I whispered: "We are . . . in a hospital and you . . . you’re
a doctor. Was I sick?"

"Yes, you were sick. I’ll explain later. But you’ve regained

consciousness now. That’s good. I’m Dr. Gratarolo. Forgive me if I ask
you some questions. How many fingers am I holding up?"

"That’s a hand and those are fingers. Four of them. Are there

four?"

"That’s right. And what’s six times six?"
"Thirty-six, of course." Thoughts were rumbling through my head,

but they came as if of their own accord. "The sum of the areas of the
squares . . . built on the two legs . . . is equal to the area of the square
built on the hypotenuse."

"Well done. I think that’s the Pythagorean theorem, but I got a C

in math in high school . . ."

"Pythagoras of Samos. Euclid’s elements. The desperate loneliness

of parallel lines that never meet."

"Your memory seems to be in excellent condition. And by the way,

what’s your name?"

That is where I hesitated. And yet I did have it on the tip of my

tongue. After a moment I offered the most obvious reply.

"My name is Arthur Gordon Pym."
"That isn’t your name."
Of course, Pym was someone else. He did not come back again. I

tried to come to terms with the doctor.

7

"Call me . . . Ishmael?"
"Your name is not Ishmael. Try harder."
A word. Like running into a wall. Saying Euclid or Ishmael was

easy, like saying Jack and Jill went up a hill. Saying who I was, on the
other hand, was like turning around and finding that wall. No, not a
wall; I tried to explain. "It doesn’t feel like something solid, it’s like
walking through fog."

"What’s the fog like?" he asked.
"The fog on the bristling hills climbs drizzling up the sky, and

down below the mistral howls and whitens the sea . . . What’s the fog
like?"

"You put me at a disadvantage—I’m only a doctor. And besides,

this is April, I can’t show you any fog. Today’s the twenty-fifth of
April."

"April is the cruelest month."
"I’m not very well read, but I think that’s a quotation. You could

say that today’s the Day of Liberation. Do you know what year this
is?"

"It’s definitely after the discovery of America . . ."
"You don’t remember a date, any kind of date, before . . . your

reawakening?"

"Any date? Nineteen hundred and forty-five, end of World War

Two."

"Not close enough. No, today is the twenty-fifth of April, 1991.

You were born, I believe, at the end of 1931, all of which means you’re
pushing sixty."

"Fifty-nine and a half. Not even."
"Your calculative faculties are in excellent shape. But you have

had, how shall I say, an incident. You’ve come through it alive, and I
congratulate you on that. But clearly something is still wrong. A slight
case of retrograde amnesia. Not to worry, they sometimes don’t last
long. But please be so kind as to answer a few more questions. Are you
married?"

"You tell me."

8

"Yes, you’re married, to an extremely likable lady named Paola,

who has been by your side night and day. Just yesterday evening I
insisted she go home, otherwise she would have collapsed. Now that
you’re awake, I’ll call her. But I’ll have to prepare her, and before that
we need to do a few more tests."

"What if I mistake her for a hat?"
"Excuse me?"
"There was a man who mistook his wife for a hat."
"Oh, the Sacks book. A classic case. I see you’re up on your

reading. But you don’t have his problem, otherwise you’d have already
mistaken me for a stove. Don’t worry, you may not recognize her, but
you won’t mistake her for a hat. But back to you. Now then, your name
is Giambattista Bodoni. Does that tell you anything?"

Now my memory was soaring like a glider among mountains and

valleys, toward a limitless horizon. "Giambattista Bodoni was a famous
typographer. But I’m sure that’s not me. I could as easily be Napoleon
as Bodoni."

"Why did you say Napoleon?"
"Because Bodoni was from the Napoleonic era, more or less.

Napoleon Bonaparte, born in Corsica, first consul, marries Josephine,
becomes emperor, conquers half of Europe, loses at Waterloo, dies on
St. Helena, May 5, 1821, he was as if unmoving."

"I’ll have to bring my encyclopedia next time, but from what I

remember, your memory is good. Except you don’t remember who you
are."

"Is that serious?"
"To be honest, it’s not so good. But you aren’t the first person

something like this has happened to, and we’ll get through it."

He asked me to raise my right hand, then to touch my nose. I

understood perfectly what my right hand was, and my nose. Bull’s-eye.
But the sensation was absolutely new. Touching your nose is like having
an eye on the tip of your index finger, looking you in the face. I have a
nose. Gratarolo thumped me on the knee and then here and there on
my legs and feet with some kind of little hammer. Doctors

9

measure reflexes. It seemed that my reflexes were good. By the end I felt
exhausted, and I think I went back to sleep.

I woke up in a place and murmured that it resembled the cabin of a

spaceship, like in movies. (What movies, Gratarolo asked; all of them, I
said, in general; then I named Star Trek.) They did things to me I did
not understand, using machines I had never seen. I think they were
looking inside my head, but I let them, not thinking, lulled by humming
sounds, and now and then I dozed again.

Later (or the next day?), when Gratarolo returned, I was exploring

the bed. I was feeling the sheets: light, smooth, pleasing to the touch.
Less so the cover, which was a little prickly against my fingertips. I
turned over and pounded my hand into the pillow, enjoying the fact
that it sank into it. I was going whack whack and having a great time.
Gratarolo asked me if I thought I could get out of bed. With the help of
a nurse, I managed to stand up, though my head was still spinning. I felt
my feet pressing against the ground, and my head was up in the air.
That is how you stand up. On a tightrope. Like the Little Mermaid.

"Good. Now try going to the bathroom and brushing your teeth.

Your wife’s toothbrush should be in there." I told him one should never
brush one’s teeth with a stranger’s toothbrush, and he remarked that a
wife is not a stranger. In the bathroom, I saw myself in the mirror. At
least I was fairly sure it was me, because mirrors, as everyone knows,
reflect what is in front of them. A white, hollow face, a long beard, and
two sunken eyes. This is great: I do not know who I am but I find out I
am a monster. I would not want to meet me on a deserted road at night.
Mr. Hyde. I have identified two objects: one is definitely called
toothpaste, the other toothbrush. You have to start with the toothpaste
and squeeze the tube. Exquisite sensation, I ought to do it frequently.
But at a certain point you have to quit—that white paste at first pops,
like a bubble, but then it all comes out like le serpent qui danse. Don’t
keep squeezing, otherwise you’ll be like Broglio with the stracchini.
Who’s Broglio?