'THE ISLAND OF THE DAY BEFORE'
Umberto Eco, 1994
JULIAN RHODES' DREAM ORGANS
(Translation by N. Tilley)
On board a ship, Roberto hears the tune 'Daphne' being repeatedly played somewhere below decks. He finds a concealed space behind the wall of the clock-room, barred by a chained, locked door which he kicks down.
The object which occupied the space was an organ, surmounted by some twenty pipes, from the mouths of which the notes of the melody sounded. The organ was fixed to the wall and consisted of a wooden structure supported by an armature of small metal rods. On the upper level the pipes stood in the centre, while little automata moved either side of them. On a sort of circular base to the left stood an anvil, which must have been hollow like a bell; around the base were four figures that rhythmically moved their arms, striking the anvil with small metal hammers. These hammers, of varying weights, made slivery sounds together with the melody of the pipes, accompanying it with a series of chords. Roberto remembered conversations in Paris with a Minim Friar, who had spoken to him about research into Universal Harmony. It was less by their appearance than by their musical function that he now recognised Vulcan and the three Cyclopes; to whom, as legend has it, Pythagoras referred when he discovered that the differences between the intervals of music rest on the principles of number, weight, and measure.To the right of the pipes an Amorino beat a wand upon a wooden block held in his other hand, tapping out the triple metre of the melody 'Daphne'.
The organ console sat on a slightly lower level, its keys rising and falling as if an invisible hand were playing them according to the notes sounded by the pipes. Below the keys, where the organist customarily pumps the bellows with his feet, a cylinder had been placed, in which large teeth were fitted in an order neither regular nor unpredictable, which resembled the way in which notes are written on the lines of a musical score, in rising and falling patterns, with sudden breaks, large white spaces and a plethora of crotchets.
Below the cylinder a horizontal bar was fixed, supporting some small levers which, as the cylinder turned, successively brushed against the teeth and, through a play of half-hidden rods, operated the keys, which in turn operated the pipes.
But the most amazing phenomenon was the reason whereby the cylinder turned and the pipes were blown. To the side of the organ was placed a glass siphon, like a silkworm's cocoon in appearance, inside which could be made out two perforated discs, one above the other, dividing it into three chambers. A flow of water entered the siphon's lowest chamber from a pipe which ran from an open gun-port (which also lit the room). The liquid was evidently drawn from the sea by the action of a hidden pump; entering the cocoon, it was mixed with air.
The water entered the lowest part of the cocoon very forcefully, as if it were boiling; spun in a vortex against the walls, it seemed to free the air, which was drawn in through the two plates. A tube linked the upper part of the cocoon with the pipes of the organ, transforming the air into song. Meanwhile, the water had fallen back into the lower chamber, and ran off through another tube. Moving a small mill-wheel, it poured into a metal shell below, from which another pipe returned it to the sea, through the gun-port. The wheel turned a bar that, connected to the cylinder, carried its own momentum.
In Roberto's drunken state, all this seemed so very natural that he felt betrayed when the cylinder began to slow down, and the pipes wheezed as though the melody was dying within their throats, while the Cyclopes and the Amorino slackened their blows. Though in his time there was much talk of perpetual motion, the hidden pump that regulated the intake and flow of water could run for only so long when set moving, before its impetus came to an end.
