“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 walclass="underline" 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
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, once we had taken a few steps forward, illuminated the face of the old man, looking at us as if he could see.
“Is that you, William of Baskerville?” he asked. “I have been waiting for you since this afternoon before vespers, when I came and closed myself in here. I knew you would arrive.”
“And the abbot?” William asked. “Is he the one making that noise in the secret stairway?”
Jorge hesitated for a moment. “Is he still alive?” he asked. “I thought he would already have suffocated.”
“Before we start talking,” William said, “I would like to save him. You can open from this side.”
“No,” Jorge said wearily, “not any longer. The mechanism is controlled from below, by pressing on the plaque, and up here a lever snaps, which opens a door back there, behind that case.” He nodded over his shoulder. “Next to the case you could see a wheel with some counterweights, which controls the mechanism from up here. But when I heard the wheel turning, a sign that Abo had entered down below, I yanked at the rope that holds the weights, and the rope broke. Now the” passage is closed on both sides, and you could never repair that device. The abbot is dead.”
“Why did you kill him?”
“Today, when he sent for me, he told me that thanks to you he had discovered everything. He did not yet know what I had been trying to protect he has never precisely understood the treasures and the ends of the library. He asked me to explain what he did not know. He wanted the finis Africae to be opened. The Italians had asked him to put an end to what they call the mystery kept alive by me and my predecessors. They are driven by the lust for new things…”
“And you no doubt promised him you would come here and put an end to your life as you had put an end to the lives of the others, in such a way that the abbey’s honor would be saved and no one would know anything. Then you told him the way to come, later, and check. But instead you waited for him, to kill him. Didn’t you think he might enter through the mirror?”
“No, Abo is too short; he would never have been able to reach the verse by himself. I told him about the other passage, which I alone still knew. It is the one I used for so many years, because it was simpler in the darkness. I had only to reach the chapel, then follow the bones of the dead to the end of the passage.”
“So you had him come here, knowing you would kill him…”
“I could no longer trust him. He was frightened. He had become famous because at Fossanova he managed to get a body down some circular stairs. Undeserved glory. Now he is dead because he was unable to climb his own stairway.”
“You have been using it for forty years. When you realized you were going blind and would no longer be able to control the library, you acted shrewdly. You had a man you could trust elected abbot; and as librarian you first had him name Robert of Bobbio, whom you could direct as you liked, and then Malachi, who needed your help and never took a step without consulting you. For forty years you have been master of this abbey. This is what the Italian group realized, this is what Alinardo kept repeating, but no one would listen to him because they considered him mad by now. Am I right? But you were still awaiting me, and you couldn’t block the mirror entrance, because the mechanism is set in the wall. Why were you waiting for me? How could you be sure I would arrive?” William asked, but from his tone it was clear he had already guessed the answer and was expecting it as a reward for his own skill.
“From the first day I realized you would understand. From your voice, from the way you drew me to debate on a subject I did not want mentioned. You were better than the others: you would have arrived at the solution no matter what. You know that it suffices to think and to reconstruct in one’s own mind the thoughts of the other. And then I heard you were asking the other monks questions, all of them the right ones. But you never asked questions about the library, as if you already knew its every secret. One night I came and knocked at your cell, and you were not in. You had to be here. Two lamps had disappeared from the kitchen,. I heard a servant say. And finally, when Severinus came to talk to you about a book the other day in the narthex, I was sure you were on my trail.”
“But you managed to get the book away from me. You went to Malachi, who had had no idea of the situation. In his jealousy, the fool was still obsessed with the idea that Adelmo had stolen his beloved Berengar, who by then craved younger flesh. Malachi didn’t understand what Venantius had to do with this business, and you confused his thinking even further. You probably told him Berengar had been intimate with Severinus, and as a reward Severinus had given him a book from the finis Africae; I don’t know exactly what you told him. Crazed with jealousy, Malachi went to Severinus and killed him. Then he didn’t have time to hunt for the book you had described to him, because the cellarer arrived. Is that what happened?”
“More or less.”
“But you didn’t want Malachi to die. He had probably never looked at the books of the finis Africae, for he trusted you, respected your prohibitions. He confined himself to arranging the herbs at evening to frighten any intruders. Severinus supplied him with them. This is why Severinus let Malachi enter the infirmary the other day: it was his regular visit to collect the fresh herbs he prepared daily, by the abbot’s order. Have I guessed?”