Free Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum by eco umberto foucault Page A

is
what?"
    "What you think it is.
Once¡XI was five or six¡XI dreamed I had a trumpet. A gold trumpet.
It was one of those dreams where you can feel honey flowing in your
veins; you know what I mean? A kind of prepubescent wet dream. I
don't think IVe ever been as happy as I was in that dream. When I
woke up, I realized there was no trumpet, and I started crying. I
cried all day. This was before the war¡Xit must have been ¡¥38-a
time of poverty. If I had a son today and saw him in such despair,
I'd say, ¡¥All right, I'll buy you a trumpet.' It was only a toy,
after all, it wouldn't have cost a fortune. But my parents never
even considered such a thing. Spending money was a serious business
in those days. And they were serious, too, about teaching a child
he couldn't have everything he wanted. ¡¥I can't stand cabbage
soup,' I'd tell them¡Xand it was true, for God's sake; cabbage made
me sick. But they never said: ¡¥Skip the soup today, then, and just
eat your meat.' We may have been poor, but we still had a first
course, a main course, and fruit. No. It was always: ¡¥Eat what's
on the table.' Sometimes, as a compromise, my grandmother would
pick the cabbage out of my bowl, stringy piece by stringy piece.
Then I'd have to eat the expurgated soup, which was more disgusting
than before. And even this was a concession my father disapproved
of."
    "But what about the
trumpet?"
    He looked at me,
hesitant. "Why are you so interested in the trumpet?"
    "I'm not. You were the
one who brought it up, to show how the Object of Desire is never
what others think."
    "The trumpet...My uncle
and aunt from *** arrived that evening. They had no children, and I
was their favorite nephew. Well, when they saw me bawling over my
dream trumpet, they said they would fix everything: tomorrow we
would go to the department store where there was a whole counter of
toys-wonder of wonders¡Xand I'd have the trumpet I wanted. I didn't
sleep all night, and I couldn't sit still all the next morning. In
the afternoon we went to the store, and they had at least three
kinds of trumpets there. Little tin things, probably, but to me
they were magnificent brass worthy of die Philharmonic. There was
an army bugle, a slide trombone, and a trumpet of gold with a real
trumpet mouthpiece but the keys of a saxophone. I couldn't decide,
and maybe I took too long. Wanting them all, I must have given the
impression that I didn't want any of them. Meanwhile, I believe my
uncle and aunt looked at the price tags. My uncle and aunt weren't
stingy; on the other hand, a Bakelite clarinet with silver keys was
much cheaper. ¡¥Wouldn't you like this better?' they asked. I tried
it, produced a reasonable honk, and told myself that it was
beautiful, but actually I was rationalizing. I knew they wanted me
to take the clarinet because the trumpet cost a fortune. I couldn't
demand such a sacrifice from my relatives, having been taught that
if a person offers you something you like, you must say, ¡¥No,
thank you,' and not just once, not ¡¥No, thank you,' with your hand
out, but ¡¥No, thank you' until the giver insists, until he says,
¡¥Please, take it.' A well-bred child doesn't accept until that
point. So I said maybe I didn't care about the trumpet, maybe the
clarinet was all right, if that's what they wanted. And I looked up
at them, hoping they would insist. They didn't, God bless them,
they were delighted to buy me the clarinet, since¡Xthey said¡Xthat
was what I wanted. It was too late to backtrack. I got the
clarinet."
    Belbo looked at me out
of the corner of his eyes. "You want to know if I dreamed about the
trumpet again?''
    "I want to know," I
said, "what the Object of Desire was."
    "Ah," he said, turning
back to his manuscript. "You see? You're obsessed by the Object of
Desire, too. But it's not all that simple...Suppose I had taken the
trumpet. Would I have been truly happy then? What do you think,
Casaubon?"
    "I think you would have
dreamed about the